Boundary
by PhKn
Summary: Three years ago the professional dueling league changed drastically, leaving Akaba Ray behind with her lifelong dreams destroyed and her father dejected and miserable. Discontent with her current life, Ray is determined to find a way to make herself happy, until she is swept into a new opportunity by a chance meeting with the person she most hates in the world.
1. Opportunity

_Chapter 1 - Opportunity_

"Ugh, turn that off while I'm eating."

I dropped my boxed salad on the breakroom table and crossed the room to switch off the TV in the corner. Kari groaned in protest.

"Ray, you're the only one that doesn't like the Real Fights," she said, annoyed. "And Zarc is my _favorite_."

"Dragons are cliché." I mumbled bitterly as I dropped into the chair beside her and stabbed into my salad. "But he's everyone's favorite, apparently."

Kari was our office admin, which by default made her my closest friend because work took up too much time for me to have a separate social life. She was comfortably plump and quite attractive, with sassy rimmed glasses and probably a million pairs of shoes. Today she was taking her lunch break with a strawberry parfait and new stack of fashion magazines, thumbing through the advertisements while she'd been watching the television.

"Of course he's everyone's favorite," she was saying, dropping her chin into her hand and staring wistfully at the blank TV. "He's the best. He's incredible. He's just…he's…"

She trailed off, speechless at merely the thought of him, so I finished her sentence for her: "Decadent."

"Exactly!" she simpered, "He's just _mouthwatering,_ isn't he?" She held out a magazine photo spread to show me: Zarc, gratuitously fashionable on a dark wood staircase, leaning with casual grace against a banister with his jacket thrown carelessly over his shoulder.

"That's not what I meant," I scoffed, rolling my eyes away from the tacky magazine spread.

"It's got his cologne sample on the page, mmm," Kari said with relish, and then pressed her face into the magazine for a second before pushing it on me. "It's called 'Sarkany.' Here, smell it—"

"Ew, no!"

"Danny and I like to watch reruns of his duels together," she said with a saucy wiggle of her shoulders, "sometimes it spices things up."

"Ugh, stop," I said, shoveling salad into my mouth before I lost my appetite. "I just don't want to watch him break a guy's femur while I'm trying to eat."

"It's the _monsters_ that do that," she said, tapping her parfait spoon thoughtfully against her lips. "And it's thrilling, it's the realest kind of entertainment to watch the opponents _really_ risk it all, you know? A _real_ survival game. That's why they call them _Real_ Fights with _Real_ SolidVision. Besides, they all know what they're getting into when they duel. Both parties have to sign all kinds of waivers that say they or their families won't ask for restitution or anything. But if they actually manage to win, it's money and glory beyond belief. Zarc practically _is_ a king, or at least he probably lives like one. And he basically pays our salaries."

"The arena is our client, not him," I said, "They buy the Real SolidVision system and pay for our maintenance."

"Well yeah," Kari reasoned, "But how does the arena make money? Ticket sales. From his popularity, and the other Elites too. Zarc sells out every single one of his duels almost immediately. Danny has tried to get us tickets the last couple of times but we're not fast enough. He's been saving up for the _good_ seats."

"The ones where you get splattered?"

"That's what the plexiglas is there for."

"Gross."

"You used to be a duelist, right?" Kari mused, digging into her parfait cup for the last of the strawberries, "I don't even remember what dueling was like before the Real Fights. Never went to watch one. I don't really understand how the cards and all the rules work. I mean, did people really care about the card game before it got _interesting_?"

"Of course they did," I grumbled, "It was plenty _interesting_ before. It was just more focused on the _actual game_ and not on smearing your opponent all over the floor."

It was unbearable how much the game had changed. I had loved the lights and the adrenaline of dueling in front of a packed audience, but once Zarc turned the game into the Real Fights, popularizing how much spectacular violence his monsters could inflict on his opponent during his matches, Father had insisted I quit. I'd been working under him as a technician at the Real SolidVision Department of Research and Development for about three years. I still got to duel sometimes—we tested out the equipment every month—but it wasn't the same. My father wasn't the same. He, Professor Akaba Leo, had been praised for his brilliant developments in Entertainment Technology and was practically a household name before Zarc waltzed into the spotlight and ruined everything. Father never meant for dueling to become this gruesome. He hardly ever went out in public anymore, too ashamed at what his work had become, too ashamed by the praise. He still worked on the system—he knew it the best, after all, and it afforded the two of us a comfortable lifestyle, but he was miserable.

"I want things to go back to how they were," I said, "It was all about fun before, putting on a good show…"

"It _is_ a good show," Kari insisted, "Like I said, it's _real._ There's nothing fake or acted or scripted. That's why it's so exciting. It's just two people putting their lives on the line."

"For your entertainment." I said sardonically.

"That's how you know they're the _best_ entertainers," she replied. "Zarc risks his own life every single time too. But he just wants to please his fans." She spread her arms wide and gazed at the dingy breakroom wall with starry eyes as though looking out at a packed stadium, "' _Ladies and gentlemen_!' It's just so _mesmerizing_ , you know?"

"It's disgusting." I pushed my half-finished salad away. "It's like we've gone backwards in time and the stadium is some kind of colosseum now. People get mauled and maimed by the monsters, and everyone wants to watch it. The most violent and cruel are the ones who win, and they get famous and rich and everything they want. It's horrible."

"Danny and I met through the fan club," Kari said, ignoring my diatribe. "You could say Zarc brought us together. And it's going really well. He works for a luxury chauffeur service and they're hoping to get hired by an Elite. There's a fancy soiree coming up this weekend that the arena owners are hosting at their super-nice hotel downtown, and his promotion to Public Relations means that he got an invite and I get to go as his plus-one. It'll be _so_ amazing. We might get to talk to an Elite about signing a contract, if we're lucky. He's a really great boyfriend."

"I'm happy for you," I said dully. "But if I could go back in time and stop this from happening, I would. It's not fair. My father worked on that system for _years_ and look what it's become."

"Imagine if he got Zarc to sign a contract for their driving service," Kari said dreamily to the ceiling, completely disregarding me again, "Then _maybe_ I'd get to meet him. Maybe. They'd get to drive him back and forth to the arena and to all his photoshoots and appearances and everything. The real high-life. You know," she looked back at me, "Danny said he has a buddy in the transport business who knew a guy who drove Zarc out of the arena once. I guess it was a last-minute substitute thing because the usual driver was sick, and he drove him to this weird office tower in the East District, not too far from here, on the corner of Fifth Street and Pivot Avenue. He thought it might be Zarc's manager's office—who _is_ his manager, anyway?—he's in the fan club, this guy, so naturally he went back later to see what this place was, but he couldn't get further than the lobby. So we never figured out what that drop-off was about, but oh well. He shouldn't have told us at all; the drivers aren't supposed to reveal the places they take their clients."

I was barely listening to her babble, trying to finish my salad even though the slimy lettuce seemed uninviting after hearing so much about Zarc. I really hated him. What he'd done to the game, my father and his work…it was despicable. It was a poor reputation to give our company, to associate that kind of violence with our product, no matter how much the masses loved it and paid to see it.

Fifth and Pivot, huh?

My father was still where he was at his desk before I'd taken my lunch break, squinting over his reading glasses at the analysis screen that read a progress bar that was crawling slowly up to twenty percent.

"Take a lunch break, Professor," I said with a tap on his shoulder. "This isn't good for your eyes. The update won't load any faster with you watching it."

My father turned around, taking his glasses from his face to pass his hand over his eyes, and smiled wearily at me. "Do you have those test rundowns written out?"

"I'll push them to your inbox to review," I dropped into my desk chair and swiped through the documents on my own screen, dull blocks of words that described a clinical analysis of the duels we'd run last week, the energy used by the unit on each given monster, any observable lag or glitch from the disk signal to the main unit. I felt bristly and restive; talking about Zarc always ruined my day just like he'd ruined everything else.

"Father."

He draped his lab coat over his chair, holding the sandwich I'd made him this morning. "Hmm?"

"I don't like doing this."

I fiddled with the pen cup on my desk rather than look him in the eye. I heard him let out a quiet sigh, and then he said, "I know you don't. I know this isn't what you wanted."

"It's…it's not that," I said, still rearranging my pens, "It's…we're just facilitating people like—people like Zarc to do his awful 'performances' with our equipment. I don't like it."

"That's true," he conceded, "But I'm still responsible for the machine. I built it, so I'll keep working on it. I know you're unhappy in this job, but you're very smart and I enjoy having you around. And you're safe."

Safe, yes. And bored. "What if all the violence could stop?"

I looked up at his face to see him smiling again, this time a little sadly. "And how can that happen?"

"What if—" I chose my words carefully, trying not to make it obvious that I already had a plan, "What if someone—I don't know—went and talked to his manager about going back to the old way of dueling? I guess they could make a lot more money if more duelists reentered the League and challenged him without all the brutality."

"More duelists," he said slowly, "Like you?"

I looked back down at the desk, flicking the cap of a pen open and closed idly. "No. I mean, that doesn't matter…I just want your machine to be represented the way it should be. You…you worked so hard on it and it shouldn't be used for cruelty like this. I can—I can talk to his manager. I used to be in the League so I know how things could work in everyone's favor, if I could just—"

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Father cut in, in the tone he always used when he was done with a discussion. "It's not your job to speak on the company's behalf, and anyone working for Zarc is going to be just as deplorable as he is."

I turned back to my documents, fighting the retorts I wanted to throw, and finally just mumbling, "I just want everything to go back to normal."

He sighed again, and sat down at his desk with his sandwich. "So do I. But if it hadn't been Zarc that caused that accident, it would have been someone else eventually. If that's what the crowd wanted to see, if that's the type of dueling they wanted to support, it could have been anyone that started this Real Fights trend. Even if Zarc did calm his tactics down, the fans would just pick a new favorite and it would all continue. We can't change the minds of the fans, they'll just want what they want."

 _But what about what I want?_

I nodded, but my mind wasn't changed either. Zarc was already a favorite before he started the Real Fights, due to his apparent "handsomeness" and particular theatrical flair made fans swoon even before the violence became a factor. _He_ was the one that was popular and the fans would just lap up anything he did. If he stopped his cruelty, everything could go back to normal, the other Elites would follow his lead. Perhaps it was all the same to my father; he had accepted his dejection over the past three years, but I couldn't. He might be disappointed with how his work had been used, but he hadn't had his dreams crushed like I had, dragged out of the limelight to be buried underground in this dingy basement lab that smelled like hot dust.

I could do it. I could make my case, at least, and convince his manager to hear me out.

I decided to drop by the corner of Fifth Street and Pivot Avenue at eight o'clock the next day, Tuesday, excusing myself from dinner with Father by telling him that Kari wanted me to help her pick out dresses to wear to that fancy soiree thing she'd mentioned. A manager working for someone like Zarc would likely be in his office late into the night. If this was even a manager's office; I only had vague speculations for why Zarc might have visited this building, but it was a start. Fixing my father's reputation had to start somewhere, and this was my only lead.

The taxi dropped me off at Fifth and Pivot, and Kari was right: there was a strangely out-of-place office tower here, with the surrounding blocks occupied mostly by warehouses. The tower was unmarked and dark-paned, plainly rectangular but for the windows of the top several floors which angled outward into a wide curve that swept around the building. The taxi drove off, and I took a deep breath. _Come on, Ray. You used to be a star duelist. You can do this!_

The lobby door was unlocked, and admitted me into a dimly-lit reception area. The walls were paneled in dark wood and the floor was glossy black marble, but there was no one at the reception desk, and only a dusty artificial ficus tree in the corner. The lobby was a much smaller room than the outside of the building, but there were no halls or doors leading off of it into other rooms and offices; just a black-fronted elevator waiting along the side wall in the far corner of the room. I walked over to it, expecting to see a list of office owner names and businesses and which floors they occupied, but there was none. Just a button to call the elevator, with no indication of to what the use of this building was dedicated.

Perhaps the floor listing was inside the elevator car, then. I pushed the button, and waited. The elevator car must have been waiting at one of the high floors, because it took a full minute to arrive and open the smooth doors into the nondescript, dark-paneled compartment. I stepped in and turned around, but there still was no list of offices—there were no buttons at all, none to direct the car to a certain floor, or even the usual open, close, and emergency call buttons.

I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. I really shouldn't be here. I didn't even know what this place was, or why Zarc might have come here, and why on earth had I come by myself? I made to step out of the elevator, but the elevator door snapped shut on me, and began moving slowly upward.

I started to panic. I was trapped in a tiny box with no way to control it, and it was taking me up to—who knows where. The only office in the building? Was the elevator automatically programmed for only one destination? I went over my speech in my head. If the doors opened right into his office, I should start talking right away, no hesitations or apologies for my intrusion.

The elevator took me all the way up to what must be the top floor, slid to an even stop, and the doors opened.

I charged out immediately, saying, "Excuse me but I'd like to talk about—"

I stopped abruptly. What had been a dark room when I had stepped inside was beginning to flicker into light upon sensing my movement, and this certainly wasn't an office. It was a massive expanse of black marble, a huge circular room that was easily large enough to fit my father's and my entire house inside it. But for the short expanse of wall that housed the elevator, the room was lined all around with those huge outward-angling windows I'd seen from outside. They extended at least the height of four floors up, ribbed at intervals with strip lighting so the height of the room stayed evenly lit all the way up to the ceiling.

I was obviously in the wrong place, but I let my curiosity push my better judgement aside. There was hardly anything in the room, despite its massive size; just a great expanse of marble floor reflecting the light fixtures above, except for two chesterfield couches next to the windows on the far side of the room, with a glass coffee table between them. I turned to my right and walked along the dark wood-paneled wall. Close to the elevator was a sideboard set with a generous selection of liquor bottles and glasses, and the wall twisted around behind itself, rolling back into an almost-concealed spiral staircase that led down to a darkened level below. I reached the end of the wall and peered down the staircase, but I couldn't make out what was down there.

But then my eyes were drawn to the windows. This room was up so high that I could practically see the whole city and its thousands of lights—street lights, the moving streams of cars on the highway, the gentle glow of the residential blocks, the brightly-lit shopping centers. I'd never seen the city from so high up before. It was breathtaking. Perhaps this place was some kind of observation deck of the city. I walked along the windows, all the way around the room to the far side with the chesterfield couches, picking out familiar buildings in the distance. There was our lab facility, empty for the day and dark but for the safety lights around the buildings. There was the Aether Arena further away in downtown, its domed roof glowing brightly with the decorative lights that changed colors from moment to moment, where I used to duel.

"It's a nice view, isn't it?"

I spun around so quickly and gasped so deeply in shock that I practically choked and almost fell backward against the window.

There he was.

The man from the posters and billboards, from the magazines at the convenience store, the gratuitous TV replays.

Zarc, the Supreme King, the Champion, leaning casually against the edge of the wall by the staircase.

"I—I—" My stomach was churning so violently that I wanted to vomit. I'd seen this very same man break bones and take magnanimous bows to the delighted roars from the crowd, sickened as my father's life's work became splattered in this man's bloody infamy. A thousand emotions exploded in my belly, from disgust and hatred to unbridled terror. _Oh god. Oh god._ He was close to the elavator, so if I made a run for it—my legs couldn't even move as it was. I was rooted to the floor in utter horror. That man— _that same man_. The man that changed everything, the one that turned Duel Monsters into the Real Fights so I'd had to…That same man, standing here in dark casual slacks and a black button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, staring at me, waiting for me to explain myself.

"I—I don't know—" I spluttered, "I don't know—how I got in here—"

Zarc raised an eyebrow. "You rang my doorbell."

I paused, trying to pull myself out of my panic to think clearly. Rang the doorbell…so the button on the lobby floor didn't just automatically call the elevator car. But that meant…

"This isn't…an office?" I tried to push my tone down to an even impression.

His face was totally passive, completely different than the ingratiating, savage smile I'd seen in the Real Fight recaps, but he glanced up at the high ceiling as if to punctuate how absurd my question was.

"This is where I live."

Another flood of horror crashed down on me. This was his home. Unwittingly I had just barged in on the personal living space of the most famously violent person in the city. I stared down at my shoes, trying to think of an innocent excuse that could negotiate my escape.

"What can I do for you, Miss Akaba?"

Somehow the sound of my name—my father's name—fully grounded me, and I planted my feet and stared him right in the face. "I hate you!"

He raised his eyebrows even further, and responded in a flat, sardonic voice, "So you're not from the fan club, then?"

An avalanche of absolute rage crashed down on me, and I couldn't even control my tirade.

"No I am not from your stupid _fan club_ ," I erupted, balling my hands into fists and planting my heels into the floor, "My father worked for _years_ on Real SolidVision! He dedicated his whole life day after day pouring his blood, sweat, and tears into that technology to make dueling more exciting and innovative and better than ever until _you_ came along, with your disgusting 'entertainment' and you disgraced the game and my father's work and you ruined—you ruined _everything_ and I—I—I _hate you_!"

My voice reverberated off the high ceiling and settled into a ringing silence. His face was still passive as he watched me closely, his eyes slightly narrowed as he considered me. I expected him to demand that I leave his home immediately, bellow at me for coming over unannounced and showing him so much disrespect in his own weirdly huge living room or whatever it was; or worse, charge right over to me and throw me straight through the large, angled window right behind me. But he turned his back to me, and said instead, "Have a seat."

Zarc moved to the sideboard and picked up two old fashioned tumblers and a bottle of dark amber liquid, and turned around to see me still standing in the same spot, speechless.

"You're my guest, after all."

I weighed my options. I could still run, but I had the feeling that if I ran he would instinctively chase me, spurred by a savage prey drive like a wild animal, but his hands were full now so if I made a break for the elevator he'd have to drop his belongings to catch me. I could politely refuse—make an excuse for myself, apologize for my mistake, and maybe he'd just let me go with my head down. But—

No. I didn't come here to run away or retreat without dignity, and the idea of apologizing to this man after everything he and his reputation had done to my father was repulsive. I'd come here to negotiate rationally with a businessman. I'd even dressed for it—a professional pencil skirt with a blazer and subdued makeup so that I would be taken seriously, and not addressed like a silly little girl who had wandered into the wrong place. If I had known the person I'd really be meeting with was Zarc himself—well, I wouldn't have come at all. But I was here, and even after my initial outburst it seemed I had a second chance to make my case. I sat down stiffly on one of the chesterfield couches, keeping my knees and ankles pressed firmly together so my posture could not be interpreted as anything other than professional. He crossed over to the couches with the bottle and the pair of tumblers.

Ludicrously and unbidden, I was reminded of an evening about two years ago when Kari, frustrated after her breakup with an ex-boyfriend whose name I could never remember anyway, insisted I needed to "get out more" and dragged me to a sleazy nightclub on the other side of town. On her giggly encouragement, I let a guy buy me a drink, and consequently had to endure an agonizing forty-five minutes as he sat way too close to me with one hand on my knee and the other around the back of my seat, breathing heavily on my shoulder. This guy had talked on and on about his "wildly successful" financial consultation firm and asked me nothing about myself or my own job except whether I "came here often." I'd finally pretended I needed to use the restroom, left Kari there—already suctioned onto a rebound guy anyway—and caught a taxi home.

Zarc set the empty tumblers on the coffee table and poured a small amount of the dark amber liquid into each glass. There was no way I'd accept so much as an ice chip from this man, much less liquor, but if he was going to slip something into the drink to drug me he'd have done it at the sideboard where I couldn't see what he was doing.

He sat down on the opposite couch facing me. I had seen his face on magazine covers and billboards, whether or not I wanted to look at them, but never in person. He was probably my age, with a strong masculine jawline but a youthful, softly curved cheek. He was widely regarded as the most attractive man in the city, but I didn't really see what the fuss was all about.

The ridiculousness of this situation was starting to settle in. Kari would absolutely die if she could have seen me now. From everything I had unwillingly learned in overhearing her phone conversations and her idle crooning over gushy magazine articles, Zarc had mastered the art of being ostentatiously elusive: keeping himself just enough in the spotlight to stay in constant relevance but carefully avoiding tawdry scandals that would get slapped all over the tabloids. He was mysterious and superior to his ignominious peers, maintaining the focus of his fame entirely on his victories in the arena and leaving everything about his personal life up to the imagination of his fans. But not only had I stumbled blindly upon his private home, I'd actually been invited inside.

He picked up his own drink and said, "So, how did you find this place?"

I hesitated. The truth, "my coworker told me her boyfriend's friend's friend in the chauffeur business drove you here once," seemed too stupid to offer. Instead, I said, "I thought your manager kept his office here. I wanted to see if I could make an appointment on behalf of our Research and Development Department, so I could talk about—"

"I see," he said, disregarding my further explanation, "This building is owned by a real estate firm under the same name as my business at the arena," he said, "If you really did some digging you could figure it out, but of course you wouldn't get past the lobby unless I authorized the elevator. I keep the bodyguards at my property in downtown so the crazed fans can try to break in there all they'd like. Occasionally I get a few curious visitors ringing my doorbell here, but they don't have much to go on and I can see who is bothering me from the security camera. But I saw you, Miss Akaba Ray, and I was curious what you might be doing here at this hour. I trust you'll keep this location a secret."

His tone was not one of making a request. Before I could assure him I would out of fear for my own safety, or even to reassert my purpose here, I realized this was the second time he'd addressed me by name. "You…know me?"

"You were in the Pro League until about three years ago," he said casually, "Your father's notoriety made you stand out, but you held your own just as well. Pretty good win rate. About the same as some of the current Elites were at the time, anyway."

I didn't know what to say. It had been quite a while since anyone even acknowledged I had been in the Pro League, much less knew my general win ratio off the top of their head after I had been irrelevant for so long.

"It's a pity you retired."

My anger suddenly flared up again. Yes, it was a pity that Zarc's ever-so-remarkable talent for popular brutality had led to my father dragging me out of the Pro League out of fear that I'd be mortally injured. What a pity, that Zarc had changed dueling for the worse and turned it all into a blood sport with his pompous, gratuitous, crowd-pleasing cruelty.

I tried to keep my voice even. "My father and I decided I should use my skills to help develop the Real SolidVision technology, so now I work there as a technician."

He blinked at me over his glass, and said quietly, "That must be frustrating, backing behind the scenes after being in the spotlight."

My hands balled into fists on my lap. How dare he try to relate to me. Of course it was frustrating. Of course I wished I could duel again, under the lights and the transfixed gaze of the audience, kicking off the ground and flying through the air with my monsters…but not if it meant risking my ability to walk, or worse. I wasn't the only one. There were tons of duelists that had backed out of the Pro League out of fear for their physical well-being, and now we had come to my main point: that Zarc and the duelists that followed in his footsteps would have plenty more opponents if this violence were to stop.

"That's what I—" I began, but he cut me off again.

"How does it work?"

I blinked. "What?"

"The Real SolidVision system. How does it work?"

I frowned in confusion at him. The Real SolidVision technology was general knowledge, especially for duelists who staked their careers in it. As the most accomplished duelist in the League, he should certainly already know how it works.

"Um," I said, "It—your duel disk sends a signal to the main unit whenever you play a card, and it projects the monsters onto the Field."

"No, no, I know that part," he waved his hand to sweep away my superficial explanation, "But how do the monsters become solid like that? Where does that mass come from?"

So, he wanted the technical explanation. Even Kari couldn't be bothered with the science behind the machine despite working in our office. But here was Zarc, the unequalled Champion of the League, asking me specific questions about my knowledge.

"The arena floor is made of fiberglass," I answered, "So it's porous, at a microscopic level. The main RSV unit is huge, and runs the entire length of the floor. It transforms energy into synthetic particles that can form together to make shapes with stable mass according to our three-dimensional models. It's sort of like an instant 3-D printer, except the model's stability is flexible. The particles can dissolve on command, and reform into a new shape. The energy sustains the shapes of the monsters according to the commands of the game."

"So the system converts energy into mass," he concluded succinctly.

"Electricity into temporary synthetic mass, yes."

"But the monsters have body heat," he said, "How is that possible if they're made of synthetic particles?"

"It's just an emission from the energy that sustains them," I replied, "But the models are built to imitate a lifelike creature, with saliva and hair and skin and a breathing cycle, but it's all synthetic. They're not flesh and bone; it's impossible to build and sustain organic substance with a machine."

"And that all comes out of the main unit in the floor?"

"Yes."

He nodded again slowly, staring into his drink. Maybe I was imagining it, but he looked slightly irritated by my answer. "And your father invented this?"

"The technology existed before, but he's the one who implemented it into dueling," I replied, "The projections' durability was weaker back then and the projection unit was much smaller, so it was just used for decorative purposes in homes—change your garlands for the season, et cetera—but he saw its potential to make the game more exciting. He stayed late in his office night after night and he and his team built all of the solid models for the existing monster cards and ported in the attack commands and everything from the existing SolidVision version, adding in the tangible element so everything would feel real. It took a long time because of how many times his budget got stalled—the company didn't think it was a priority, and kept insisting he set Duel Monsters aside for other implementations instead. So he went to all sorts of high-society sponsorship parties to get outside funding. He took me along once, when I was a teenager, so I could tell everyone about how much I loved playing Duel Monsters and how excited I was about his project in order to help get him sponsors. I got all dressed up, and Father let me taste his champagne, and I—I felt so grown-up and important. And finally when the project got enough sponsors, he went all over the world to collect data, testing various sources of energy and observing their effects on the projections. He would take me to the lab and show me the monsters he'd finished. So I promised myself I'd work really hard to get into the Pro League so I could make his amazing work shine and put on a great show for everyone and I'd—"

I stopped talking abruptly. Zarc was smiling slightly at my nostalgia. I'd let myself reminisce and forget where I was, and whom I was talking to, allayed by the soft curve of his cheek and his gentle, unthreatening voice. Somehow I'd even relaxed out of my stiff knees-together position and actually crossed my legs like I was comfortable. _What are you doing!? You didn't come here for a sentimental chat!  
_ I steeled myself, sitting up straight again and pressing my knees and ankles back together. "Because of what you did," I kept my eyes fixed on the empty seat of the couch beside him rather than at his face, "My father is too ashamed of all that work to go out anymore. The Real Fights have made him miserable, they've ruined his reputation. He's a good man."

It was a weak, mushy argument. I'd had a strong argument before, but I couldn't even remember it anymore; it had all fallen through the cracks in my disorientation at finding myself sitting with this man. What business did I have begging for the credit of my father from Zarc, who profited grossly from his own merciless talents at the expense of my poor father's happiness? He was a superstar. One old engineer's depression was no concern of his among the roars of approval from his fans and admirers. I was stupid. This whole plan was stupid.

Zarc finished off his drink and set the glass on the coffee table with a thoughtful tap. "The thing about reputation," he said, "Is that it's all about what everyone else thinks. Your father's work allows the duelists to entertain the crowd the way the crowd wants, doesn't it? Everyone is pleased and excited by it. Doesn't that mean his reputation is good?"

I couldn't answer. Yes…even after the Real Fights began, my father was congratulated for his excellent innovation. Everyone _was_ pleased, everyone was thrilled at how Real SolidVision had brought about a new evolution of dueling. My father's misery was his own, not due to any shame dealt to him, but it was undue all the same.

Zarc stood up suddenly, as though his thoughts impulsed him to move, and wandered around behind the couch he'd been sitting in.

"There's no such thing as 'good,' anyway," he went on, dragging his hand casually along the back of his couch with his eyes on the window, "There's no medal for achieving moral superiority. There's just what everyone wants from you, and whether you have the guts to fulfill it. 'Good' is just the label everyone else determines, isn't it?" He stood at the window, and I watched him as he looked down at the glittering city that lay below him, "The people want what they want, and if you give it to them, they'll reward you and then ask for more. If they approve of you, you are 'good.'"

I stood up suddenly, my hands balled into fists, and he turned around to look at me with vague surprise, as though he'd almost forgotten I was there in the few seconds that he'd looked away from me.

"You may have instigated the Real Fights and everyone else thinks you're _so great_ but you'll never be _good_." Sharp anger was running through me again. I wanted to punch him in his stupid tacky face. "My father wanted to create something wonderful for everyone to enjoy, he dedicated his life and all of his skills to make something new. You just—you took an accident and turned it into a horrifying trend—you make me sick, the way you _get off_ on all the attention you get from torturing your opponents in the arena—you don't deserve _any_ of this! How dare you compare yourself to my father! How dare you—how— _I hate you_ and your fan club and your nasty monsters and—and—!"

The look on his face had turned ugly. I turned on my heel and marched toward the elevator, across the vast, empty marble floor. I slammed my hand down on the call button and the doors slid open immediately to admit me. I stepped inside and turned around.

"You're revolting," I said, "I'd once thought since you had the same gift I do you'd be—but no, you're not special. You're just a cruel, cocky gasbag and you—"

"Gift?"

He was walking toward me. The elevator car had no buttons and I couldn't make the doors close before he reached me. I hadn't meant to mention it. It wasn't something I liked to think about, but it was undeniable from even the few of his duels I had had the stomach to watch.

The elevator doors started to close, but he got there first. He put one hand on the edge of the door to force it back open, and closed his other around my wrist.

"What gift? What do you know?"

I tried fruitlessly to wrench my wrist out of his hand. "Nothing—! I don't know anything—! Let me go!"

" _Tell me_!"

I was scared. With the grip he had on my wrist he could drag me out of the elevator and fling me across the room. I'd seen him do it in the TV recaps to much larger men. He could slam me into the wall. He could break my arm in his hand. I'd seen him do it. "Please," I whispered. If I spoke any louder I would start sobbing in panic. No one knew I was here. I hadn't told anyone where I was going. "Please let me go."

He looked at my face with some mixture of annoyance and compunction, and then relaxed the hand holding my wrist. I backed all the way against the back wall of the elevator with my arms around my chest, as though that would prevent him from grabbing me again. He kept his hand on the elevator door; I was still trapped.

"What did you mean, I have the same gift that you do?" he said with feigned politeness that hardly concealed his impatience.

He wasn't going to let me leave until I explained my statement. I could lie—but no lie would work on him now if he suspected the truth already. If he knew what gift I meant.

"The monsters," I said quietly, still with my arms wrapped protectively around me, "You can hear them, can't you? I can—I can understand their feelings. Their bodies may not be real but their spirits feel alive to me. I've always kept it a secret because I never met anyone else who could, but…you can communicate with them. They speak to you."

His knuckles were white as he gripped the edge of the elevator door. "How can you tell?"

I weighed my options again, and still in my panic decided to tell the truth."I thought I was just imagining it for the longest time—but the way you move with them in the arena, it's obvious to me. We were in different strings in the Dueling League even back then so we never met in person but—even when I'd watch you, I could see that you were listening to them and learning from them and I felt like they… _knew_ you."

He didn't reply, but simply stared at me in astonishment as though he'd never seen anything like me before in his life.

"May I leave now?" I stared at the floor of the elevator.  
He blinked, and seemed to realize that his hand on the elevator door was preventing me from leaving. He slowly slid his hand away and took a step back as the doors finally closed, and the elevator moved smoothly downward.

I didn't tell Kari that I'd visited the address she'd mentioned. I told her nothing of my conversation with Zarc, or his huge, empty tower home overlooking the city. That I had berated him for my father's shame, or confessed to sharing a strange, unexplainable secret with him while he trapped me in his elevator. It was like it never happened, and Kari continued to sigh at her admin desk over each of Zarc's new press cuttings and tacky photoshoots, sometimes on the phone with her boyfriend from the fan club, while I pretended not to hear her and focused on my test duel result graphs.

On Thursday she was distracted, because the fancy sponsorship party she was supposed to go to with her boyfriend was on Saturday and she still hadn't decided which of the four pairs of shoes she'd bought would go best with her dress, even after I'd given her my advice three times.

"Here's your mail, Ray," she said, dropping a stack onto my desk and then immediately shoving another fashion magazine into my face and poking one of the photos with her index finger. "What do you think of _this_ updo? Would my hair be too curly for that?"

"Updos always look better with curly hair," I said firmly, with no idea what I was talking about. I was tired of her constant fussing and glad it would all be over on Monday after the party. "You should put a fancy clip in it."

"Funny you should mention that, I got a couple different ones, I wanted to know if…" and she dragged me immediately into another debate over her hair clips, whether the rhinestone one or the one shaped like a flower would be better. I insisted on the flower, since the rhinestones would distract from the new earrings her boyfriend had given her—"Can you believe he bought me _diamonds!?_ "—on their last big date. She seemed satisfied with my reasoning, and finally went back to her desk and left me alone.

I was happy to see that the newest issue of my home and office organization magazine had arrived, along with some usual ads for department store sales and restaurants, and also a thick, square envelope with no return address.

The envelope was made of embossed paper, and my full name and the office address were printed in fine gilt ink. It seemed very luxurious; I wondered if it was a cleverly-disguised sample ad from the expensive cosmetic shop in the mall; I'd bought one lip gloss there to appease Kari on an outing last year and somehow ended up on their inescapable mailing list. I'd never even worn that lip gloss.

A black folded card came out of the envelope, with my name printed in gold again on the inside:

 _Miss Akaba Ray,_

 _You are cordially invited to_

 _the AETHER ARENA SPONSORSHIP GALA_

 _at the Stardust Hotel_

—and dated for this Saturday night.


	2. Champagne

The Stardust Hotel was the fanciest accommodation in downtown, servicing the Aether Arena for the Elites and whatever high-profile patrons would come to watch the duels. Any party held there was extremely exclusive, only for sponsors, investors, and representatives of Elites, besides the Elites themselves. I clutched my invitation nervously, half-expecting to be turned away at the doors as an impostor. I had no business here, after all; how did I know this invitation wasn't some elaborate prank? Nevertheless, I'd bought a new pewter satin off-the-shoulder cocktail dress and matching shoes after work yesterday, spent three hours earlier today doing and redoing my hair and makeup and fussing over jewelry, all the while unsure as to what I would even be doing this evening. Shrinking into the corner with a drink I'd bought myself, probably. If I got in the door, that is. This invitation almost looked too formal, after all. It must be a fake. I wasn't important enough to be invited to a party like this.

I took the elevator with two other couples that were dressed to the nines, starting to feel awkward that I was arriving alone. The other women, with their arms curled around their gentlemen's elbows, looked curiously from me to the invitation in my hands. I stared at the mirrored ceiling of the elevator. I looked really nice, actually. I ought to dress up more.

The elevator chimed and admitted us to the ballroom level, where across a wide, marble-floored hallway the hotel attendants were waiting to greet us and check our invitations. I hung back behind the two couples to watch them be admitted first, and to avoid the shame of being turned away in front of them while the ladies laughed at me behind their hands. The first gentleman presented his invitation. Oh god, it was white. Gold print on white paper. Mine was black. Of course mine was a fake. Why would someone do this to me? Who would want to prank me like this? I looked over my shoulder, as though some unknown trickster was going to leap out from around the corner and yell Gotcha!

The second gentleman presented his invitation, and he and his date were bowed cordially into the dark ballroom. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought the lady peered back over her shoulder at me as they walked in.

It was just me left, standing there like an idiot with my fake invitation. The doorman held out his hand. "Your invitation, miss?"

"I, um," I allowed myself a sheepish laugh, starting to just turn around and leave, "I'm sorry, I have this…thing." I waved it nonchalantly like the garbage it was.

He nodded, and kept his hand outstretched. "Yes, miss." He didn't seem concerned over the differently-colored invitation. I handed it to him, waiting for him to tell me to leave or be escorted out. But he looked at it with a casual glance at my name printed in fancy gold lettering, and said, "Miss Akaba, of course. Right this way." He nodded to his colleague at the other door, who stepped in to take his place. He offered me his elbow, just like how the gentlemen in front of me had led their dates. I took it in a daze, wondering if I should ask him what was going on or simply pretend like I knew what I was doing here.

He walked me through the crowd to a small bar table with two high-seated chairs, centered with a candle and dainty vial with two roses; one deep red and one pink. "Your table, miss," the doorman said, "Please keep your invitation on your person; it will allow you to come and go from the ballroom as you please."

"Right, thank you," I said, and hastily fished in my purse for a couple of bills to tip him.

The doorman smiled indulgently, and shook his head. "No, no, miss. That's been taken care of."

He left, and no sooner had he disappeared back into the crowd than a tidy waitress appeared, set a napkin and a flute of champagne down on the table in front of me, and said, "Compliments, miss."

There was a slice of fresh strawberry floating in the champagne, collecting little bubbles like a crystal. I sipped it, looking around. At another high-seated bar table was one of the Elites, surrounded by an entourage of two women and two personal assistants. They called him Rugen the Crippler, and his luckier opponents ended up in the hospital. A hotel attendant replaced his empty glass with a new one, and Rugen tossed a crumpled bill across the table at her as a tip. She picked it up and slipped it into her pocket, with no polite refusal.

"Ray? Ray!"

With a mixture of shock and relief I looked around at the sound of my own name. Kari was here, wearing a baby-blue ruffly number and hanging off the arm of her smartly-dressed boyfriend as they approached the bar.

"Oh my god!" Kari squealed, and some high-ranking corporate gentlemen at the bar looked around in disapproval. "You look so pretty!"

"You too," I smiled, glad to have found someone I knew. Even after all her fussing about her outfit all week I'd forgotten that she'd be here, too distracted with my own anxiety.

"You didn't tell me you were coming too!" she went on, as her boyfriend—Danny?—leaned over to order from the bartender and offered his payment card for the tab. "Did you get in as a plus-one? Who are you with?" She looked expectantly at the other empty seat across at my table, as though a gentleman would pop into existence there to introduce himself as my date.

"Um, no," I said, setting my champagne down on the table and digging into my purse to extract the gilded black invitation, "This just showed up in the mail on Thursday, so…"

Kari stared at it with comically wide eyes, her mouth agape. "That's a VIP invitation!"

I looked down at it. It didn't say VIP anywhere on it, just my name and the details of the event. "Is it?"

Danny reappeared with an extravagant fruity cocktail for Kari and something clear and fizzy for himself, took one look at my invitation as well, and said, "Geez, is that a VIP invitation?"

"What does that mean?" I said, annoyed, and stuffed the black invitation back into my purse so they would stop gaping at it.

"Sponsors, investors, and corporate representatives buy these to attend," he flashed his white invitation out of his jacket pocket, "But the black ones are for invited guests. Elites, you know, like—" he nodded over my shoulder at Rugen and his gang of sycophants. "—the people we want to sign onto our contracts, for the publicity. The big-deal people."

"I'm not a 'big-deal,'" I protested, "I just work for Research and Development. Real SolidVision doesn't need sponsors; we generate revenue from the arenas that use our product."

"Sure," Danny said, "But, wow, I guess someone at the arena hosting tonight wants to kowtow to your research department. Your dad developed the system, right?"

"He was the chief engineer for reconfiguring the machine for Duel Monsters," I recited mechanically, finishing off my glass of champagne. I stared into the bottom of the flute and pointed at the soggy strawberry, leaning over to Kari and whispering, "Am I supposed to eat this?"

She shrugged, and winked at me. "Danny needs to schmooze Rugen for a touring deal. They want to be his exclusive transport providers."

"Good luck," I said, glancing over at Rugen's table, "He seems like a handful."

Danny waved his hand as though to shoo away the concern. "We have a fleet of luxury limousines," he said. "Accommodating the whims of celebrities is our specialty, after all."

"I wonder if Zarc needs an exclusive transportation contract," Kari pondered. My stomach twisted at the sound of the name. "Baby, if you see him, will you introduce me?"

Danny laughed as though to dismiss the idea, but it hardly concealed his sudden excitement at the thought. I saw his eyes sweep the room for several seconds, before looking dismayed. "I don't see him here," he said, "I'm sure he already has his services handled, though…"

She pouted, but quickly changed the subject. "That's funny," she said, pointing at the vase of two roses on my table, "All the other tables have white roses. These ones sort of match your hair, don't they?"

She was right; the two roses in the vase did vaguely resemble my hair colors. Rugen's table featured a white rose, which was pushed aside to make room for his and his entourage's many beverages, and every other table that I could see was decorated with a white rose.

"Anyway, gotta go," Kari wiggled her fingers to say goodbye, and winked again. "Have fun! Enjoy your special treatment."

I watched them as Danny straightened his posture and engaged Rugen in conversation, waving down a waiter to order him another drink. Rugen seemed not to even notice him. One of Rugen's two bodyguards stood up to stand next to Danny, seemingly just to intimidate him, as Kari hung behind.

"Your glass, miss?" my waitress was back too, offering her hand to take my empty champagne flute. I handed it to her, and she set another full glass, complete with a strawberry slice again, on my table with a fresh napkin. I offered her the tip that the first attendant had refused, but she waved her hand to dismiss it, instead handing me a gilded dinner menu in a black leather case.

"I thought it was a buffet?" I said, pointing at the wide spread of fancily-garnished food laid out on a table by the window.

The waitress smiled. "VIPs receive dinner service at their table, miss. Take your time."

I glanced down at the menu, and my waitress had only just begun to walk away when I waved her back and whispered, a little ashamed to have to point this out, "I'm sorry, there aren't any prices listed on the menu?"

Perhaps I was imagining it, but she looked a little pitying at my ignorance. "Please don't worry about it, Miss. It's been taken care of. Enjoy your evening."

She left quickly, maybe too quickly, before I could protest.

There was another Elite Duelist at one of the far tables whom I recognized as Jericho, whose specialty was snaring his opponents in Traps before slowly, torturously draining their Life away. He looked bored as his personal manager talked with a smartly-dressed investor, probably hashing out the terms of some contract or other.

"Excuse me, Miss Akaba, is it?"

I looked up. One of the two gentlemen that had scoffed at Kari's noise had approached my table. He was wearing a sleek black tuxedo with a brightly-colored pocket square folded neatly on his breast. "My name is Ayuma Tetsu, I'm a representative of Sundustra. You are the daughter of Professor Akaba, is that right?"

"That's right," I was a little taken aback, but it wasn't surprising. My father was quite well-known. "How…how can I help you?"

He adjusted his lapels, and smiled. "Our company is looking for investments. Forgive me for overhearing—you're a representative of Real SolidVision's Research and Development department?"

"Well, yes," I said. "I'm part of the Practical Engineering team. We test the Real SolidVision updates, make sure it's working properly for integration in the arenas, test the Monster models in the laboratory and on the Field, handle the signal communication between the Duel Disks and the Field…you know, all the nuts and bolts."

"Yes, yes, of course," Ayuma said fervently, "Sundustra has been looking for projects to apply our cutting-edge solar energy technology to. Investments, if you will. We want to show the world that Sundustra can power anything and everything, and high-capacity Entertainment Technology like Real SolidVision is exactly the type of product we would love to sponsor. High-profile advertising."

I took a sip of champagne, processing this statement, while Danny's words echoed back in my mind, I guess someone at one of these corporations wants to kowtow to the research department. Was I really being treated like an investment opportunity by corporate investors? Who had even invited me?

Ayuma went on, "Would you be interesting in partnering with Sundustra as the exclusive source of energy for the Real SolidVision device?"

"Solar energy doesn't typically regenerate fast enough," I said, deciding to be honest and straightforward. "It can gather enough for a strong output but RSV uses it up so quickly that it wouldn't last more than one or two turns in an Arena Duel."

"Yes, we're aware of the current limits," Ayuma replied, "But we'd like to use your product as the means for our own research in high-capacity energy efficiency. Will you think about it?" He offered me a business card.

"Of course," I said, and put the business card in my purse. He excused himself politely to move across to his next networking target, and allowed me to finish off my second glass of champagne. My waitress returned to take my dinner order; I chose a seabream dish that didn't look too heavy. Being treated like an Elite was a little surreal; like everyone was being aggressively accommodating.

"Miss Akaba," another young man, this time escorting a lady, approached my table, "May we buy you a drink?"

"I'm not sure there's any point," I said, bewildered, as my waitress set a third glass of champagne in front of me without a word, "They just keep bringing them."

The conversation began again. He had heard from Mr. Ayuma that I was the Practical Engineering Representative of Real SolidVision and would love an opportunity to chat with me, too. He worked for a toy company who wanted to develop a miniature version of the RSV device for household Dueling, which they'd market to children. He made flattering remarks about my department's work, and he and his date laughed at my unfunny, nervous jokes. I took his business card, he and his date moved along.

The evening wore on this way; somehow my reputation spread around the room quickly and my job title grew in grandeur every time it was quoted back at me. "Practical Engineering Representative" turned into "Chief Practical Engineering Advisor" and then into "Executive of Practical Engineering Relations." It was really quite ridiculous. My dinner arrived with more champagne, and I was joined by a lady from the press, hoping to do a news piece on the new developments in the RSV system. I took her business card. My waitress brought me dessert—even though I hadn't ordered any—and another gentleman was interested in setting up tours for the public through the testing facility. I took his business card. After four glasses of champagne and an excellent meal I was brave enough to venture into the crowd to check in with Kari, but found myself constantly pulled into conversations with corporate investors, collecting more business cards. Everyone was friendly, interested in my work, complimenting the advancements my team had made in our field. I found Kari and Danny by the dinner buffet; Danny had gotten a lukewarm response from Rugen, according to Kari, but had made better headway on convincing Jericho to sign a deal.

"Are you having fun?" she said, "I really never see you being social outside of work, and here you are at a party just talking about work again."

"It's nice," I said honestly, "I feel—important. When Father pulled me out of the professional Dueling sphere I thought I'd never enjoy myself in the Research Department but…everyone here is being really flattering."

"There are a lot of rich men here," Kari pointed out, "Find one of them to flatter you and get him to buy you something expensive."

"I don't need a rich boyfriend."

"I didn't say boyfriend," she said with a wink, wrapping her arm around Danny's waist, "You're out of the lab and doing something fun for once. You look hot when you dress up. Let loose!"

Danny pulled her away to dance. The string quartet in the corner struck up a slow, lilting song and I watched through the crowd as Kari laid her head against Danny's shoulder. The lights over the floor dimmed to a warm, romantic cast, like the effect that candlelight might have given. I stood on the edge of the dance floor, watching each couple for a few moments at a time, letting the effect of the champagne carry my thoughts into the softer reaches of my imagination. Perhaps Kari was right; perhaps I should find someone to entertain me for the evening. I'd gotten all dressed up but I felt like I was still missing an essential accessory. This was a nice song, I would have liked to dance to it.

A hand gently took me by the elbow. I turned to see what gentleman might have finally approached me.

But it was another hotel attendant. "The corporate hosts have invited all the VIPs into the Blackrose Lounge," he said.

"Oh," I replied blankly. "O—okay."

He offered me his arm, and I allowed him to lead me to the back of the ballroom and through a set of double doors that was guarded by a doorman and a velvet rope. If the event hosts had invited me in there, maybe they'd have a more thorough explanation as to why I'd been added to the VIP shortlist. Even as the "Executive of Practical Engineering Relations," it didn't make any sense. That wasn't even my real job title. I was just a Duel Technician, one of several on the same team under my father. Not special.

The doorman showed me through to the Blackrose Lounge, which was a darker, more intimate room off the main ballroom. It had its own bar, and a separate back entrance for guests to bypass the crowd. A group of men were sitting at an arrangement of leather wing-backed chairs and couches around a glossy coffee table, some of them smoking cigars, and I recognized almost all of them; Rugen was here, in the center of a couch, flanked on either side by his two women-companions like crooning pets. While I glanced at them, Rugen offered one of them a cigarette from between his fingers, and the lady took a draw from it as he held it, before he put it in his own mouth.

I tried a small smile at the two ladies. One of them was idly examining the state of her heavily-rhinestoned manicure, and the other cast a disdainful glance at me before leaning to look behind me, as though she expected me to be the escort of someone more interesting. It was clear that I had nothing in common with these women; even the heels of their shoes were higher than mine. Their skin had that covetable golden sheen that I could never had attained from sitting inside a basement test lab, the perfectly-applied makeup from years of practice I could never justify spending the time on, and yet I distinctly saw Rugen's eyes fall idly upon the spot between my knees and the hem of my dress, his tongue flashing momentarily between his rough lips.

Jericho, too, was lounging in an armchair beside his manager, both of them smoking cigars and talking in low tones. The other Elite Duelists were here; a man called Flintlock, wearing his typical array of heavy gold chains and rings, next to his bored-looking date with a similar style of jewelry; Diesel, whose Machine monsters barraged his opponents with vicious assaults, with a bodyguard apparently just for decoration; and, slightly pushed back from the circle in a wing-backed leather armchair, unaccompanied, Zarc. My stomach twisted when I saw him, remembering his intimidating presence when we had met before. He did not acknowledge me.

I took my seat in a barrel armchair, acutely aware that every single one of these impressive men had built their fame and fortunes by committing acts of violence with the technology my father had spent years so many years developing. I hated all of them. I hated that my job was to perfect and develop the technology that they used for acts of atrocity. I hated that they all had ruined my life. A hotel attendant placed a new glass of champagne on the table beside me without a word.

"Miss Akaba!" another smartly-dressed older gentlemen sitting beside me held out his hand to shake mine. He had neatly-parted greying hair and the poise of a seasoned businessman. "My name is Shino Kouta. I own the Aether Arena—and this hotel, of course—and am the exclusive host of this event. I've corresponded with your father quite a lot over the years."

"Yes, I remember you," I said, which was true: Father had had him over to our house for dinner a couple of times several years ago when he was trying to promote the implementation of Real SolidVision into Duel Monsters.

"The professor has been a bit hard to catch these past couple of years," Shino mused, "He speaks with our maintenance team to arrange installations and tune-ups before the tournaments but he has been quite difficult to pull into investment meetings. I was thrilled to hear you'd been added to our guest list for this evening; I would love a chance to talk about the newest advancements with the machine."

"I'm very honored," I replied, still confused by his wording: I was thrilled to hear you'd been added to our guest list. Wasn't this his gala? Didn't he get to decide who was added to the guest list? "I didn't realize so many businesses were interested in investing in our research."

"But of course," another gentleman from across the circle chimed in, wearing a name tag that matched Shino's, "RSV is the greatest innovation in Entertainment Technology this century. Plenty of companies would like to partner with it for their own ventures, especially with the popularity of the game."

Of all the gentlemen in the room, he was seated the closest to Zarc. I guessed that Zarc had spent the whole evening back here with these event hosts, receiving his dinner service away from the crowd so the event hosts could keep him to themselves to focus on their agreements while Rugen and Jericho and the other Elites had to mingle out on the main floor with the masses.

"So, Miss Akaba," Shino redirected my attention, "You decided to become a scientist, like your father? It seems like intelligence runs in your family."

"I'm a duelist," I said reflexively. "We run practical tests in the lab and on mock Fields before they're implemented in the arena, and develop new, more efficient ways to run the machine. Actually," I tapped my purse full of business cards, "Some of the contacts I made this evening talked to me about partnering to make the device run on renewable energy. A more efficient energy system could cut costs quite a bit."

Shino clapped his hands and laughed. "That is certainly something I'd want to invest in. The energy needed for running the machine is one of our greatest costs at the arena. We'd certainly love to support the research for a project that could run the machine more efficiently with less of a heavy power output."

I was about to respond, but was interrupted all of a sudden by a gruff voice across the circle. "Wait, I've seen you before."

I looked over. Diesel was pointing at me with his cigar.

"You use to be in the Pro League," he said, "But you quit when the Real Fights started."

I took a sip of champagne to avoid answering for a moment, and then replied, "The Board of Directors invited me onto the Development team at RSV."

"A lot of girl duelists quit when the Real Fights got popular," this time it was Rugen to cut in as he pulled one of his arms from around one of his girlfriends' shoulders to lean toward me, "Didn't want to get their hands dirty. Broken bones are ugly."

"Your daddy made the RSV machine, right?" Diesel said with a sneer through his cigar smoke, "I guess favoritism only goes so far. Your daddy couldn't save you from a broken neck."

"He never—" I started weakly, but Rugen's laughter drowned me out.

"I never liked to duel girls anyway," he cackled, sloshing some of his beer onto the lap of one of his girlfriends, "Felt like a waste of time. They don't put up much of a fight, and they break too easily. The card makers know girls are worthless at dueling so all the cards they make for girls are worthless. Flowers and birds and some other kitschy baby trash."

My head was swimming a little. I couldn't quite formulate a response; my chest and my throat were tightening and I glancing around the room, looking for a way to escape without making it obvious that I was about to cry. It was becoming even more obvious again that I didn't belong here, sitting among all these men whose actions had driven out every duelist in the old League who wasn't willing to raise the stakes to the level they had.

"I bet you only got accepted into the League because your daddy was famous, eh?" Diesel taunted, "What was your win rate? Forty-two?"

Eighty-two. Same as yours, Diesel. And I worked so hard, I did everything myself, I was well within the standard acceptance percentile…

"I'm glad the Real Fights weeded out the fakes," Rugen was saying, "Dueling isn't for p—"

Keep it together, Ray, don't cry, don't cry, not in front of these horrible people—

There was a sudden smash and everyone fell into immediate silence as Zarc suddenly shouted in a voice that sliced cleanly through the room, "I said no ice!"

It took me a moment to realize what had happened; I took in the scene like a bizarre tableau as everyone stared, frozen, at Zarc. The waiter beside him held an empty tray, looking baffled and stricken, as the shards of Zarc's newest drink glass lay on the floor against the wall ten feet away. The waiter looked from Zarc to the broken glass and then to Shino, who made a frantic gesture to indicate that the waiter should replace the glass, and he hurried away.

Diesel rolled his eyes and took a draw from his cigar, and Rugen muttered something into the ear of one of his girlfriends, who smirked for his benefit, but she dropped the expression as soon as he looked away.

Shino made a nervous laugh to break the tension. "I'm sure the Board of Directors recognized the value of Miss Akaba's unique intelligence and the need to preserve it," he said, casting a subtle but deploring glance at Rugen.

There was about an inch of beer left in Rugen's glass, but he handed it to one of his girlfriends to finish it off for him. "Whatever," he grunted. This time his lingering gaze fell unapologetically on a spot below my collarbone as he shifted a bit in his seat, his fingers drumming against his thigh.

Maybe it was my imagination, but Shino looked distinctly nervous. He patted my hand again to pull my attention back to him and said, "I don't suppose, Miss Akaba, that you have any, ah, new developments to Real SolidVision in the works? Just between us." He winked. Even Flintlock and Jericho stopped chatting to listen in. Knowing the inside scoop on the technology could help their game, after all.

The waiter returned with a new drink for Zarc. It happened so quickly that my slowed observation almost missed it, but I distinctly saw him place a tightly-folded piece of paper on the tray as he took the new glass, and the waiter turned on his heel without a word as a second hotel attendant swept up the pieces of the rejected drink. In the same instant, my waitress reappeared with a fresh flute of champagne to replace my empty glass.

I sipped my fresh champagne, and decided under its encouragement to play along, now that Rugen and Diesel seemed to have forgotten their interest in tormenting me. Nevertheless, I felt I ought to prove myself, and I managed to recover quickly. I batted my eyelashes. "Oh, I couldn't possibly tell."

"Even just a hint," Shino pressed cajolingly, "Everyone here can thank their career to your departments' work. What are your next advancements, eh?" He patted my hand again.

Even behind the buzz of the champagne I knew that most of our projects and updates to the RSV machine were classified, but not everything I was working on was an official department project yet. I could share one, something unremarkable. I smiled. "Well," I pulled my hand away to open my purse. "There's a little project I've been working on with my father. It's not in real production yet; just a little gadget he and I made together."

I pulled it out of my purse. It was about the size of a credit card, with a smooth black screen and a chrome rim. I set it face-up on the coffee table in front of us, and activated the screen with two short taps.

"It's a miniature duel disk!" Shino exclaimed. Diesel, Flintlock, Jericho, and Rugen all leaned in to peer at the device. Zarc made no acknowledgement of it, and stared in disinterest down at his drink.

"Not quite," I explained. I tapped the screen a couple times. "We've been calling it the DDC - 'Duel Disk Communicator'. This prototype doesn't have the ability to read the data off of the cards or interact with the main RSV system, but it stores my contacts and can communicate with other duel disks using the same signal technology."

"If it can't be used to play the game, what's the point," Jericho flopped backward in his seat, ostentatiously bored.

"Well, this is just a prototype," I conceded, "But it does contain some technology that we're hoping to add into duel disks if it can maintain stability at this stage." I tapped the screen again, swiped through a list of options, and tapped again. A slit along the side of the device glowed, and one of my monsters appeared on the table in miniature form, projected as a stable hologram. One of my "kitschy baby trash" monsters, as Rugen had so eloquently described it.

Diesel leaned back in. I tried not to stare at him, but even Zarc glanced up to look at the monster.

"Is it solid?" Rugen interjected.

"It is," I said, and reached out my little finger to stroke the monster's hair.

"Portable Real SolidVision?" Shino peered closely at it. "Without the main RSV system?"

"This miniature version is a test model," I said, "The communication channels are more stable as of now. Projecting a tiny replica of a monster with Real SolidVision is still a huge energy drain and the current Disk batteries can't support it for more than a minute or two, but we're hoping to perfect this technology and implement it into Duel Disks so the monsters appear on the Field as a shared projection between the main RSV system and the Duel Disks themselves. It will split the impact of the data between the two machines."

The duelists and corporate executives murmured their interest, but then Zarc spoke again.

"There's a lag between turns," he said quietly, "When the monsters flicker for a second, like the projection is glitching. Could this thing fix that?"

The other Elite duelists looked at him. I could tell from their facial expressions that they had not even noticed the lag he was talking about, nor expected him to speak to me at all. I took this as my opportunity to look directly at Zarc as well.

It was as though we'd never talked at his home, with his coffee table between us, discussing my dueling career and my father's reputation until I divulged that we shared a strange secret. His gaze was cold and unfamiliar, as though he had neither memory of nor interest in who I was. But upon being addressed by him in this context, with this room full of Elites watching Zarc with some mixture of adoration and contempt, I felt the heat rise in my face.

"We think so," I choked, "It's a—an effect of the heavy amount of data that the software has to regenerate every turn. We're hoping that by dividing the projection data between the RSV system and the Disks, the Field will refresh seamlessly."

Zarc seemed satisfied by my answer, and leaned back into his seat without another word.

Rugen leaned forward and snatched the DDC off the table. My miniature monster flickered out of sight. He turned it over in his hands, showing it to his two lady friends, and said, "So when does this get added to our disks?"

I shook myself a little. The champagne was catching up to me, but my DDC in his hands made me nervous. All of my personal information and contacts were in there. "At this point the technology is just in the testing stage until we can stabilize the energy output. Potentially this could grow into a development that balances the energy used to project the monsters, and lower the electricity requirement on the main RSV unit by making the disk batteries run at a higher capacity," I explained, "But our budget is still focused mostly on the arena model, so development on this is low priority."

I held out my hand to receive my DDC back, but Rugen tossed it across the circle to Diesel, who spent some time fiddling with it, projecting random monsters from my library onto the arm of his chair and flicking them carelessly to test their solidity. Zarc leaned over in his chair to speak to Shino's associate beside him, who promptly stood up to pry the device gently from Diesel and hand it to Zarc. He examined it, running his fingers along the edges of the device, as Shino engaged me in conversation again.

"Would the device be installed into existing disks, or would every duelist need to upgrade to an entirely new disk?"

"Hypothetically, it could be included as a feature in newly produced disks," I said, "But it could begin initially as an add-on that would be installed into the disks we already own, or replace part of them."

Zarc slid the DDC back across the table to me. I picked it up and snapped it back into my purse before any of the other duelists could grab it.

The conversation turned away from my relevance, toward each Duelists' individual appearance schedules; I tuned most of it out and focused on more champagne, until—

"When I'm the King," Rugen interjected, "I'll book this whole hotel for private parties. Exclusive. And we can split the profit from the cover charge seventy-thirty."

I looked up from my drink. Zarc fixed his gaze firmly on Rugen, and then his mouth cracked into a wide grin. It was a threatening smile, like a wild animal baring its fangs, and a stark change from the passive, bored expression he'd maintained until now. "When you're the King?"

"You can't stay at the top forever," Rugen said, and the slur in his speech gave away how exceptionally drunk he was. One of his girlfriends glanced up at the ceiling, as though ashamed to look at him. "Someone will take you down eventually. I only wish it were me. Get your hospital bed ready, Supreme King, or your casket. Not that there'll be much left of you for it."

Zarc held Rugen's gaze with his wide, cold smile. Jericho and his manager started to whisper to each other, his manager shaking his head repeatedly.

"We don't, ah—" Shino was rubbing his hands together nervously and trying to break the tension with a halfhearted laugh, "We don't typically host Duels between Elites, for the sake of—"

"Then how do we know he's the reigning champion if none of us get to challenge him?" Rugen demanded. "I want what's mine!"

"You?" Diesel slammed his fist on the coffee table, "If anyone's going to challenge 'Supreme King Zarc,' it'll be me! I have more wins than you!"

"My ratings are higher and I've held my seat longer!" Rugen spat back, "I have way more fans than you, you bastard!"

Flintlock shouted his way in with a string of obscenities, Jericho's manager switched from whispers to full-out bellowing in protest as Jericho loudly insisted he have a turn at Zarc's seat as well, Shino weakly calling out, "Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please—"

"I'm sure we can arrange a show."

Zarc had not raised his voice. It was incredible that he could even be heard above the tumult, but even at his words all six men fell silent. Zarc looked at the man who sat beside me, with his grin settling into a cold smirk.

"Don't you think, Shino? It would certainly attract a crowd to your arena, wouldn't it?"

"Ah—yes, I suppose," Shino was wringing his hands and casting nervous glances at Jericho's manager, who was not even bothering to hide his panic.

It was clear why the room suddenly felt so tense. Elites didn't fight each other; they held their own tournaments and amassed their own fan-followings, but never clashed for the sakes of their own careers. It was a marketing technique that the League directors had devised, after the Real Fights took over the old dueling methods, to optimize revenue from the fans. There were five Elite seats and each could maintain their fame until a newcomer won his way through their tournament and knocked them off of the pillar. Zarc had the highest fan rating, the highest win ratio, and the longest seated term as an Elite, which earned him his title as Champion. If any duelist managed to defeat Zarc while Rugen still held his seat, the status of Champion would pass to Rugen. But even a broken bone could end an Elite's career and—well, that was the luckiest any opponent of an Elite could hope to get. The promise of power and riches and glory to anyone who managed to take an Elite's place kept Duelists flocking to the arena to challenge them, but by now unseating any of these men was extremely unlikely. I didn't know whether any of these Elites really could defeat Zarc, but given the secret I knew about him…it might be impossible.

"I can't imagine you'd turn down an opportunity to bring in so much revenue," Zarc went on smugly, glancing down at the half-inch of amber liquid in his glass, "A Battle of the Elites. It could be an exhibition."

"An e-exhibition?" Shino stammered, "Not a tournament?"

"They said they all wanted an opportunity to unseat me," Zarc replied calmly. Jericho cracked his knuckles, as though on cue. "One by one. It'd be quite the spectacle. I can clear out my schedule a little more, if you think it's possible."

Shino flushed. He'd probably spent the entire evening cajoling Zarc to compromise his schedule for the arena; any appearance by Zarc was a massive sell-out event, and here he was offering his time to the idea of an exhibition that pitted him against the four other Elites. If Shino agreed, he'd risk the careers and therefore the continued appearances of all but one of his major revenue streams; but the opportunity to hold more tournaments to seat new Elites would arise. A new generation led by the winner of this Exhibition.

When Shino seemed too conflicted to answer, Zarc said, "I'll make the necessary arrangements. I suggest you all do the same."

The threat in his voice on "the necessary arrangements" made my stomach turn cold. Rugen, however, seemed satisfied.

"I'm much more fit to be King than you, anyway," he said, "I entertain on and off the stage. Never a dull night. Where have you been at half the parties?"

I thought of Zarc's strangely huge and conspicuously empty tower home, as Zarc himself cast a sideways glance at Rugen without answering.

"Besides," Rugen put both of his arms around his ladies' shoulders and cocked his head smugly at Zarc, as though Zarc should be impressed and jealous of him for being covered in women, "What kind of guy wears a flower and doesn't even have a girl with him?"

Zarc met this comment with another glance, lifting his chin in that characteristically haughty way that Kari drooled over in all his magazine spreads, but still said nothing. I looked at him again, trying to register what Rugen was talking about. Perhaps through my tipsy haze, or from Diesel's cigar smoke, or my general tense distraction from being seated among all these Elites, I had not noticed before. Pinned to Zarc's black sport coat was a boutonniere, made from two roses: one deep red, the other pink. The same roses that were on my table, my reserved table, the only table with roses of that color. The colors of my hair.


	3. Lamplight

My stomach lurched. I sprang to my feet so quickly that my half-finished fifth—or sixth?—glass of champagne tumbled off my side table and shattered on the carpet. Everyone stared at me, and I cast around for an excuse. My head was swimming.  
"Excuse me, gentlemen. I—I need to use the ladies' room."

I turned on the spot and started out the double doors I'd come in. A voice behind me called, "Hon?" and I turned, the room spinning under my feet. "It's that way." One of Rugen's girlfriends was pointing to the hallway off the opposite side of the room. I crossed as quickly as I could, stumbling slightly in my heels as I went, and I heard her cackle behind me.

I pounded through the door of the ladies restroom. Thank god, there was a powder room with a sink at the vanity. I threw my purse down on the counter and vomited into the sink.

Zarc had invited me.

I ran the tap, and dropped onto the velvet pouf at the vanity, laying my forehead against the cool marble. My head was swimming. The room was spinning. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Zarc had arranged my entire evening. Every detail, probably; insisting I be added to the VIP list, dinner service, champagne, roses. His outburst about the ice in his drink was probably all some theatrical distraction to get Diesel and Rugen to stop ridiculing me. Maybe Shino was in on it. He had to be; as the party's host, Zarc would have demanded he send out my invitation. Shino had probably invited me into the Blackrose Lounge to impress Zarc by acting interested in me and my work. What a toy I was.

I let myself lie there, slumped on the overstuffed pouf with my face on the counter for another several minutes, unsure as to whether I'd throw up again if I tried to stand. What did he even want with me? To get me drunk…well, he'd succeeded at that, but I was not leaving the restroom anytime soon and he'd missed his chance to try anything on me. Not that he'd seemed interested in taking a chance at all; he'd ignored me the entire evening. Elaborately arranged my evening and ignored me.

"Miss Akaba?"

I jerked my head up, and immediately felt dizzy. It was my waitress from before, who had served my drinks and my dinner at my table, holding a cup of tea and a glass of ice water in either hand. She placed them silently on the counter beside me, and turned to leave, when I yelled in a strangled voice, "Did he hire you?"

She turned, and met my watery gaze as though considering whether to answer.

"Did Zarc pay you to take care of me?" I repeated, less forcefully.

With a slight smile, she said, "Yes, Miss."

"Why?"

She blinked, looking slightly confused. "He wanted to ensure that you would have a nice evening."

Behind her, the restroom door banged open and admitted both of Rugen's golden-skinned girlfriends, and the waitress took her leave. The ladies spent some time in the stalls, gossiping in nasal voices about some inane subject I couldn't follow; and continued at the sinks, probably fixing their makeup. I was taking up the vanity, after all. They walked back past me, and I heard one of them snidely comment, "Damn, hon, you're trashed," before leaving me alone again and laughing out in the alcove, "Why was she invited?"

I held the teacup between my hands. The ginger aroma was soothing. Those women, Rugen's girlfriends—or escorts?—everyone thought of them as nothing. They were his accessories, the symbols of his ostentatious indulgence, eating sugar out of his hands like horses. They probably attended plenty of parties like this one, but only as his trophies, not as anyone whose work or opinions were ever respected or sought after. I'd spent the evening being treated like a savvy and valuable business asset, flattered for my intelligence and my work. Plied with champagne, because—now that I thought about it—I'd let slip to Zarc that I liked it. If he'd wanted a woman for an arm accessory, he could have found himself one easily, prettier than me and far more vapid and compliant. Instead, he had paid that waitress—maybe the doorman too, or even the entire event staff—to make sure I had a nice time without subjecting me to his presence and making me look like a brainless object hanging from his elbow. And really, I had had a nice time—up until now, when I was vomiting in the ladies' room in drunken shock, but the business cards in my purse were still valuable. Rugen's girlfriends probably received gifts of fancy jewelry and sparkly dresses, rhinestone manicures and fine handbags, but I got a stack of connections that could boost my career and bring in funding for my father's and my research.

A gentle chime issued from my purse. The DDC?

I unsnapped my purse in confusion and fished the device out. Perhaps my father was checking in, even though he was usually absorbed in his work in his home office at this hour. But no, a message had appeared on the screen from an unknown disk code.

Meet me in the lobby after everyone else is gone.

I stared at it, my dizzy head only barely understanding the message before a second message followed it:

P. S. You shouldn't pass your personal device around. Someone could steal your contact information.

And finally, a third message:

-Z.

I dropped the DDC on the carpet and put my head down on the counter again. Meet him in the lobby? I had every intention of spending the rest of the evening in this restroom and then sneaking out a side door to hail a taxi. I should have brought a change of shoes.

I sat up, and looked at myself in the mirror. Even through my watering eyes, I still looked okay; my makeup was holding up, thank goodness for the expensive kind. Maybe no one would suspect that I'd just thrown up. I drank the tea, and instantly started to feel better; still jittery, but it settled my stomach.

I looked down at his messages on the DDC. I wasn't going to respond, but…

It would be rude not to at least cordially thank him. He had a lot of power and snubbing him could cause trouble for our department, more shame for my poor, undeserving father. I'd stood in Zarc's own home and told him how much I hated him and his cruel entertainment, but he had still seen fit to invite me to this exclusive party and ensure that I was treated with respect. It didn't make any sense. If anything, I ought to ask why.

What if I did go and meet him?

The party ought to be winding down now, but I stayed in the restroom for another half an hour, finishing the tea and the water until my head was clearer and the taste of bile had washed out of my mouth. I picked the DDC up off the floor and stood up. Even in my insensible shoes I felt I was relatively stable to walk again, and began pacing around the powder room and going over my plan. I could sneak out the back door of the lounge and bypass the ballroom, and then ask for a taxi as soon as I got to the lobby. If Zarc couldn't meet me before the car arrived…well. That would be a shame. I could message him my curt thanks as I rode home.

I pushed the restroom door open and peeked out. The alcove hallway was empty, and I couldn't hear any talking from the lounge, so I crept out and looked into the main room. Completely deserted. How long had I been in the restroom? Everyone was already gone from the lounge? Even outside in the hallway it was quiet, although the low hum of voices and clinking of glasses could still be heard issuing out of the ballroom. Good, so the party wasn't completely over yet. In relief I hurried, as quickly as I dared, along the slick marble floor in my high-heeled shoes, back toward the elevator that I had arrived in. The doorman who had led me in was still there at the ballroom entrance, and he nodded at me as I passed by. I attempted a shaky smile.

I took the elevator alone, staring up at the mirrored ceiling at my own pale face. All I had to do was ask for a taxi. Then I could escape politely without upsetting Zarc.

But the lobby was completely empty. No hotel attendants, no receptionist, no concierge at the desk. I turned, thinking I must have to hunt someone down in the hall.  
"I thought you might have run away."

He was there. Zarc. Still wearing his black sport coat with the rose boutonniere over a dark dress shirt, he gave an impression of feral elegance as he stood casually with his hands in his pockets.

Either I had completely missed him in my fixation to ask for a taxi, or he had intentionally crept behind me. He'd done the same at his home, waited until I had my back turned and caught me off-guard—well, I had dropped by unannounced, but he had seen me coming and allowed me in. Again, his face held none of the complacent smirk he had worn in the Lounge for the benefit of his lesser peers; he looked passive and thoughtful, even a tiny bit apprehensive. I stared at him, trying to rearrange my strategy, to stammer a quick and polite thanks and come up with an excuse to leave, but—

"Take a walk with me?"

It wasn't a demand. I could still refuse, say I'd called for a taxi and it would be here soon and then lock myself in the restroom again. But a certain curiosity was starting up within me—that same feeling that, on the night when I'd broken into his home to give him a piece of my mind, had led me into admitting our strange shared secret. There was more to it than just to thank him. I had questions.

I nodded silently, and he walked to my side while I avoided eye contact with him. He offered me his arm, but I wordlessly crossed my hands over my purse, and he dropped it without a word.

The hotel had a fine and spacious outdoor garden, with walkways enclosed by lamplit trellises. There were a few couples here, sharing their drinks and desserts away from the noise of the ballroom to wind down the evening as soft strains of cello music floated over from a gazebo on the far side of the garden. I thought I heard Rugen's raucous laughter from a far table, and Zarc gently took my elbow and quickly pulled me into one of the trellised walkways so as not to be spotted.

"What, you don't want to be the center of attention right now?" I said, unable to keep the mockery out of my voice.

He didn't turn his head toward me, but said simply, "No."

I was still confused. The Elites treated women like status objects; showed them off, staged "accidental" scandals to stay hot in the tabloids, keep themselves in the center of attention. Rugen would have a new set of girlfriends next month, sparking a wake of accusations and shocking news plastered all over the trashy magazines at convenience stores. Zarc had stayed away from me for most of the party, and even now it seemed he didn't want to be seen with me. We walked some yards through the trellises; gradually the tinkling of tableware and murmur of the voices in the garden faded into quietude. His hands were shoved into his pockets and he seemed lost in thought, disengaged.

I still had questions, and perhaps because the alcohol still in my system made me feel brave, I said, "I suppose I ought to thank you."

He looked around at me in surprise as though he'd forgotten I was there. "Why?"

"For this evening," I continued, "You arranged my invitation."

"This was my thanks to you," he replied.

I blinked. "For what?"

"An engaging conversation the other day." He looked upward at the lamps along the top of the trellis, and then smiled at me. It was unthreatening and genuine, completely different from the bared fangs he'd flashed at his Elitist peers in the lounge, before it dropped into an uncharacteristically somber expression. "And I…I'm sorry if I scared you."

His sincerity took me aback. I couldn't think of any witty retort, so I just said, "Thank you for apologizing."

"I was just surprised. I, ah," he absentmindedly put his hand over his breast pocket, "Have never met anyone…anyone else like me before."

He stopped walking and turned to face me. He really did look a little apprehensive. Long ago, I'd been on dates with boys before and they'd looked the same, the same mixture of hopefulness and nerves and…vulnerability, unsure how much of their hearts to bare.

"I wanted another opportunity to talk to you. But I got the impression the other night that if I invited you personally, you'd refuse."

Well that was true. I would not have accepted an invitation to be the female accessory of the man who had ruined my father's life. Ruined my life. Or anyone who held onto my wrist in an elevator and refused to let me leave before I answered his question.

"What do you mean, anyone else like you?" I said, although I knew what this was about. I didn't love the idea that I had something special in common with Supreme King Zarc, but he, too, was the only other person I'd met that could so deeply understand his monsters.

His apprehensive face flashed a bit of impatience, as though he could tell I was playing dumb on purpose. "I've been able to hear them since I was young," he went on. "Whenever I'd play, it was like they were helping me. They told me their secrets. They taught me how to duel." He peered into my face intently, trying to see if I believed him.

I felt strange to even be talking to him about this. For the past three years I'd watched him shatter bones to tumultuous approval, despised everything about him and blamed him for the drastic change he'd caused to my own life. Father had pulled me out of the Pro League because he was afraid I'd get injured, and I'd taken the job in Development while bitterly watching this man rise to the title of Champion with a wake of blood and cruelty and vicious admirers. And now here he was in front of me, confessing a raw secret to me in a trellis-covered lamplit pathway, wearing a boutonniere that matched my hair.

"My father taught me how to duel," I said slowly, turning to continue walking so I didn't have to look directly at him, "He always said if I believed hard enough, the monsters would help me. After some time I started to—well, it was really more like a feeling. I could tell when a monster was happy, when they'd be pleased they'd won a turn, or when they'd be regretful that they couldn't do more if they lost. They love to play the game. It's why they exist. Over time the feelings got stronger, I could sense more specific ones, I began to discern their personalities. Certain ones calling out, asking me to trust them."

"And your father decided to develop Real SolidVision just to enhance the game?" Zarc concluded, "For you?"

"For everyone," I replied, smiling at the memory of my father happily reporting the progress he'd made on his project every evening over dinner when I would come home from school. "I remember the first time he brought me to his lab—well, I work there now—and he had this projection plane and he asked me to choose a monster, and then suddenly there she was, perfectly solid. She held my hand, and I could feel her joy at finally getting to meet me…" I looked up at the glowing lamps along the top of the trellis as we walked, shining like my lovely monster had shone for me on that day. "And I just felt that her soul really was alive. I told my father so, and he just laughed and said, 'Yes, they seem so lifelike, don't they?' But of course he didn't really believe that the monsters have souls; he doesn't believe in magic. He's an engineer, after all. He just loved the game, and loved sharing it with me, and—" I stopped walking and turned around, realizing that Zarc had stopped along the path a few seconds ago.

"Magic?"

He was staring at me as though he'd never even heard the word before, bewildered.

"Well, yes," I said, almost laughing, "They're cards; it's a game. If they have souls it's because the game is magical. Don't you think?"

He walked toward me, closing the gap between us, with his hands shoved back in his pockets. He stopped right beside me. A little too close. Why was my heart pounding like this, if I was no longer afraid?

"I don't believe in magic." He fixed his gaze on me, but I didn't step back or look away. "They're real. They chose me. They're a part of me." I could hear the fervor rise in his voice, and maybe he heard it too. He turned away and kept walking, as though to cool his head, and I followed beside him, waiting for him to go on. I didn't want to run away anymore. He intrigued me.

After recollecting his thoughts he continued, "I don't even remember a time when they weren't with me." His hand was on his breast pocket again. "They started out as quiet little voices, but the more I listened the louder they spoke, inviting me to play alongside them. They want to be with me, always. I want to make them happy, I want them to live. When the game was just in the hologram stage I could feel their presence and hear their voices, but it was distant, like they were still separated from me through a wall. The application of Real SolidVision to the game was…When I finally made it into the Pro League and I could feel the ground shudder beneath their feet and see their breath in the air and their voices were clear and resonant, it was like…it was like I was…"

"Home?"

This time it was I who stopped walking, stepping in front of him to peer into his face with curiosity and resolution. Here was a man who had spent his whole life listening to his monsters, dancing alongside them in the arena. Of course it was expected for a professional duelist to immerse himself in the game, but the way he spoke about his monsters was as if they were his family. It was as though he was seeking comfort in me, the only other person in the world who knew what it was like to understand the mysterious souls of these creatures.

He raised the hand that was over his pocket to brush my hair away from my face, holding my cheek, and he smiled in relief. "I knew you'd believe me."

I lost track of what happened at that moment. He kissed me—he kissed me?—and suddenly I was wrapped up in his arms. It had been so long since I'd kissed anyone, and he was so earnest in the way he held me and kissed me…There was a delicate scent that lingered around him, a sort of musk with a smooth, warm finish; subtle and entrancing. The world was spinning around me, gravity wasn't working properly, and I had to hold onto him so I wouldn't fall over or fly away. Where was I? What had we even been talking about…?

A muffled, high-pitched shriek issued out from somewhere in the garden. I broke away with a compulsive step backward—the heel of my stupid shoe snagged in a crack between the pathway's flagstones—and I was halfway to the ground before he caught me deftly. My brain took an extra second to catch up with what had happened, and why the arm under my back and the shoulders I was suddenly holding onto were all so exceptionally firm, before he lifted me back up and set me carefully on my unsteady feet. I stared at him for a long moment; he was still holding my upper arms to keep my balance, until I blinked.

Zarc cleared his throat and stepped back, letting his hands slip away from me, and I let go of his shoulders as the realization of what had just happened crept in through the back of my inebriated brain. My stomach twisted; I thought I might throw up again. Oh god. I'd had too much to drink and I'd kissed the worst person in the world. The person who ingratiated the crowd to my father's chagrin with his decadent displays of violence. The person who had taken everything I'd worked so hard for away from me. Somehow the champagne and his soft voice and his lovely smell and his…his mysteriously gentle, disarming presence had overpowered my judgement. Even he looked sheepish, shoving his hands ruefully back into his pockets, as though this hadn't been his plan either.

"I—" I choked, trying to keep my voice steady, "I should go home."

He looked regretful. "Alright."

I turned to leave, took a few steps, and he caught me suddenly by the hand.

"Ray," he said, and I realized it was the first time I'd heard him say my name all evening, "I—I want to invest in your project. In the DDC."

"The DDC?" I said, taken aback, "It's just a pet project. It's just a communicator that stores data from—"

"No, no," he shook his head, "The part that can stabilize the monster projection. That little lag when the Field refreshes, it—it pinches."

I blinked. He was still holding my hand. "It…pinches?"

"The monsters," he said, "When they flicker out for that second, it pinches. They don't like it, it hurts them. Please," he squeezed my hand a bit, "I'd like your department to be able to focus on that project. I'll put a call in on Monday to make a contribution."

"Yes, alright," I gently pulled my hand away, but still added, "Thank you. And for this evening, Zarc." I met his eyes again, holding his gaze for a little longer than I intended, until I turned and began walking away again.

"Yuusha."

I turned around again. "What?"

"My name is Yuusha," he said quietly, looking up at the lamps again, and then back down at me. "It's what they call me. I figured you should, too."

Completely lost for words, I nodded and repeated, "Yuusha." It was what they called him? His dragons called him by his real name?

He smiled again, and then turned around and made his way slowly in the opposite direction.

Back out of the trellised pathway, back into the lobby which was, mercifully, populated with its usual staff again. The concierge looked up when I arrived, and said with a kind smile, "The car for you, miss?"

"Yes, please," I said. I suddenly realized how badly my feet hurt from these awful shoes.

She dialed an extension on her phone and said into the line, "The car for Miss Akaba, please."

Of course it wasn't a taxi. Of course there was a car dedicated just for me. The concierge refused my tip, just as the rest of the hotel attendants had, and a sleek black car with tinted windows pulled into the porte-cochère within a minute, the driver stepping out to open the rear door for me without making eye contact. The car was inconspicuous on the outside but had a deeply luxurious interior, the kind of vehicle I was sure Danny's company would employ for chauffeuring their Elite clients.

The driver would not accept any ride fare or tip either, and as I sat on my way home, watching the street lamps fly by through the tinted glass, I thought that this must have been the strangest date I'd ever been on.

But it was a good kiss. A really, really good kiss.


	4. Favors

I took my lunch in the breakroom again on Monday, tired of the stuffy ventilation in the lab and loath to sit at my desk any longer. I had found a new salad recipe and prepared it yesterday, lost in thought as I flicked through the pages of this month's Balance magazine ("Home and Office Life for the Career Woman").

Kari suddenly dropped into the seat next to me and plunked her elbow on the table, her face shining with intense curiosity. "How was it?"

"I think I'll put more radishes in," I said, "I like them with this dressing."

"No no no no no no no," Kari shoved my lunch away from me. I stared at her. She was flushed with excitement, like she always looked when someone had juicy gossip to share with her. "I mean…you know. After the party."

"Oh, that," I dropped my chin onto my hand. "I felt pretty sick yesterday morning, and then I spent about an hour in the bath, and finally felt okay to do the shopping later in the afternoon."

Kari huffed. I guessed I was being difficult. "Look, Ray, I know you're not one to kiss and tell but I am dying to know."

"Know what?" I said, but my mouth went dry at her words "kiss and tell." Could she possibly…?

"You know…" Kari looked over her shoulder to make sure we were alone. "You and—" she cupped her hands around her mouth and formed the word Zarc.

I dropped my fork onto the table and plunged my face into my hands. "Oh my god!" I groaned, and then grabbed Kari, vice-like, by the wrist, and hissed, "You cannot tell anyone! How did you even know!?"

"Danny and I took a walk to get some fresh air after the party," she said in a coy tone, "along those enclosed paths in the gardens, and we ran into you two when you were—" she cleared her throat and winked, "—you know."

I thought back to the shrieking noise that had broken Zarc and me apart the other night. "That was you?"

"When I realized it was you I couldn't help it," Kari giggled. Danny pulled me back around the corner right away, so I guess you didn't see me."

"Don't let Danny tell anyone either," I said, picking up my fork and pointing it at her nose like a spear, "I will—just—don't you dare!"

"But what was it like?" she pressed, slapping the table with her open palm impatiently. "He had a really nice suite, right? Was it amazing?"

"I—" I could feel the heat rising in my face now, "I didn't go up to his hotel room, if that's what you're saying."

Kari pouted. "You can be honest with me. I won't tell, I promise."

"Nothing happened," I insisted, "I left right after that. I went home."

"Really?"  
"Yes."  
Kari sighed and flopped back against the chair. "I know you're one of the smartest technicians in this department, but you're really dumb."

"Excuse me?"

"You should have seen the two of you," she elaborated, looking suddenly wistful, "He was really into you. He was wrapped up around you like he wanted you so bad. I don't even understand how you got that far, much less totally blew him off after that."

I felt my face burn with embarrassment. I'd had a hard time recalling what even happened during my kiss with Zarc, but Kari was describing it like some deeply passionate romance scene and not the weird, confusing moment I was remembering.

"We were both kind of drunk," I said, "It was a mistake."

"A mistake?" she rolled her eyes, "Ray, to some girls the idea of drunk-kissing the biggest celebrity in the entire professional dueling sphere is better than marrying the love of their life."

"Are you and Danny having problems?"

"Ray, I really like Danny and we're really happy together, but if I got a chance to spend the night with Zarc I'd dump Danny in a heartbeat. And he'd understand."

"True love."

Kari ignored this, and kept prying. "Come on, Ray, I mean how long has it been since you even went on a date?"

I tried to think back. "We went to that nightclub that one time."

"That was two years ago!" She rolled her eyes dramatically in an overdone pantomime of fainting. "And it doesn't count as a date unless you went home with someone. You haven't gotten anything since then?"

"It's none of your business." I stared at the table. Kari was bringing up a lot of old feelings I had long since suppressed. She'd never understand how worthless I felt after I had to quit dueling, how unfulfilling everything else felt. It was just bad timing that she and Danny had witnessed my moment of weakness, that was all. Just a stupid, confused, drunk moment. Just the first time in a long while that I'd felt pretty, or interesting, or valuable, and it was all because of…

I realized I was squeezing the handle of my salad fork so tightly that it was digging a mark into the palm of my hand. I flung it down on the table.

"And you're telling me after that you didn't just go for it?" Kari was saying, "I bet the Champion's suite is super luxurious. You could have at least gotten him to buy you a bunch of expensive stuff."

"I don't want expensive stuff, and I have standards," I said, swigging my bottled water and dragging my salad back across the table toward me, "And they don't involve the man that turned dueling into a blood sport. He's awful."

"Right," Kari said dubiously, "Didn't look like you thought he was so awful the other night, though…" she let her tone trail off, dripping with implication. "I know I told you to hook up with a rich guy but oh my god. I mean," she shifted in her chair to move closer to me, "How did you even pull that off? I didn't see him all evening. I didn't even know he was at that party, and somehow you got him wrapped around your finger? No offense, Ray, I think you're a catch, but that's crazy."

"I don't know," I groaned, trying to think back through the evening and weave together a reasonable story, "The event host invited all the VIPs into the back room to chat some more, and he and a bunch of other Elites were there, and…we just started talking." I decided to skip the part where I panicked and vomited in the women's restroom in a drunken stupor. "And after that we went for a walk."

"What did you talk about?"

"Nothing," I said, and when Kari gave me a withering look, I amended, "Dueling."

"You talked about work, didn't you," She leaned back in her chair and groaned at the ceiling. "You're insufferable. This is why none of your boyfriends ever stuck around."

"Thanks," I said, picking my fork back up and stabbing into my salad. She wasn't wrong.

"Well anyway," she said in a disappointed huff, "I thought I'd give you this in case you two didn't talk enough." She slapped a different magazine on top of my open Balance; it was an issue of Duelist that I'd seen on the racks awhile ago and stubbornly refused to read. The cover featured a full-body photo of Zarc, in dramatic lighting, looking handsome and intimidating in his classic battle-worn dueling gear. The photo was probably heavily doctored to enhance his eyes and his strong jawline. I scoffed.

"This is from a year ago," I said, "Why do you still have this?"

Kari shrugged and ignored the question. "They got an exclusive interview about his life and early career, all that stuff. Thought maybe you'd want to read through it to get to know him better."

"I'm not going to see him again," I said firmly.

"Whatever," Kari said, standing up but leaving the magazine with me, "If you feel like admitting something else, you know where to find me. And turn in your time card later today," she added. She shuffled back to her desk, looking thoroughly put out at the lack of juicy gossip I had provided her.

I finished my salad and the Balance article I had been interested in ("Reorganize Your Workspace") and glanced at the Duelist issue Kari had left. I'd dropped my subscription three years ago after they'd begun to print nothing but articles about Zarc and his imitators and turned into a sycophantic fan rag instead of the informative journal it used to be. I ruefully folded it inside my own magazine so no one would see me carrying it, and returned to my cubicle in the lab.

No one was around. Father had been called in for a routine budget meeting with the board of directors, and the other technicians had gone offsite for lunch as a loud, annoying group. Furtively still, I laid out the Balance magazine on my desk, and flipped it open to reveal the Duelist issue again. I tried to avoid looking at the cover photo of Zarc, instead just registering that the article entitled "The Life of the Supreme King: Zarc's Early Years" started on page seventeen.

I hated myself for doing it, but flicked over to the article anyway. I was met instantly with another photo of Zarc, this time a closeup from the same photoset, sitting in a leather armchair and looking thoughtfully away from the camera so the accent lighting glanced off of the outline of his lips. I skimmed the article.

Left at the hospital as an infant by a single mother who seemed far too young to raise a child and declined to leave any information about herself or the father. Surrendered to the city. Lived in a variety of foster homes, never stayed in any of them for more than a year. Constantly changed schools. Took to the underground dueling scene to earn money to pay for a tiny apartment at the edge of town; was scouted by an agent that saw his potential. Managed to build a high enough win ratio in legitimate tournaments to be accepted into the professional league, and "the rest is history."

Yes, the part where Zarc had ordered a decisive attack against his opponent's monster, and the impact had flung the other creature right into its master, shattering the bones in the man's shoulder and upper arm. The article worded this incident as "an enthralling turning point in the history of interactive dueling!" Yes, that really changed everything. It was an accident; but the crowd's roaring approval was enough to incite the same violence from other duelists, and Zarc himself stood as the icon of this newly-evolved form of performative dueling: the Real Fights.

The article went on to describe, with gushing fascination, the finesse that Zarc displayed in his dueling; other duelists like Diesel would win by default after incapacitating their opponents before the game was really over. If an opponent's injuries prevented him from taking his draw, or if he fainted from blood loss, it would be considered a forfeit and the standing duelist would win. Diesel obviously had a high win rate due to his strategy. Rugen the Crippler's high fan rating was due to the fact that he, as his epithet implied, would aim his attacks to break the bones in his opponent's hips or legs so they would have to continue the game from a prostrate position on the ground, groveling. Many opponents would still faint from the pain without even finishing a turn. Zarc, however, was known for always keeping his opponents right on the edge of their physical capacity until he had decisively won the duel, and then ending it with enrapturing brutality. The greatest entertainment. Dangling their well-being before them, giving them a chance to believe they could win, and then ending it with a crushing final blow.

I slapped the magazine shut, flipped it over so I wouldn't have to look at Zarc's handsomely-photographed face, and put my head down on my desk. What a disgusting person. A disgusting person that had treated me to a lovely party and kissed me after a strange and genuine conversation about our shared secret. The magazine article had mentioned nothing about Zarc's mysterious ability to hear his monsters' voices, nor anything even about the connection to them that he had confessed to me. Nothing about the name Yuusha.

I pulled my arms down and set my chin on them. His mother, probably just a scared teenager, had abandoned him as a baby; no father to find, kicked around the foster system and transferring schools year after year. He'd never had a family, probably not even a friend if he'd never stayed in any school long enough. No real human connections. All he ever had were his monsters, whispering to him and guiding him, sharing their feelings with him. But he had reached out to me, sought out my company, in the hope that I might understand him.

Home.

He was still dangerous. He was still violent and cruel. But…

"RAAAAAAAY!"

Kari's shriek shook me out of my reverie even as she burst the lab door open and clung to the doorframe.

"What on earth now?" I sat up straight to lean around my cubicle wall at her.

"Um, can you come look at something right now?" she squeaked, her glasses slightly askew.

Bemused, I followed her back to her desk, bringing the copy of Duelist to give back to her. She dropped into her chair and clicked through her folders frantically.

"You talked to a bunch of potential investors at that party, right?" she was saying, "Because, um, your Special Projects account…kind of blew up."

"Special Projects?" I said. I suddenly remembered, for the first time after he had mentioned it, that Zarc had offered to invest in the DDC project. "Wait, what do you mean 'blew up?'"

"Well," Kari said, slightly breathless and clutching her chest, "It—it's normal to get investor contributions, but usually they schedule a meeting first and then the money shows up after a bunch of paperwork and all that jazz in a few days. But this just appeared, timestamped as of nine o'clock this morning, and it…" she dropped her voice to a squeaky whisper. "It's a lot of money!"

She opened the budget accounts tab, and highlighted a line labeled "Investor Contributions."

I gasped, and instinctively backed away as though that large of a number would burn me if I got too close.

"Ray," Kari adjusted her glasses as though her she was misreading the account figure. "With this amount you could—you could hire a bunch more engineers, and basically build an entirely new department dedicated to Special Projects separately from the Research Department's budget." She looked back at me over her shoulder. "What on earth kind of investor did you…" her eyes fell on the Duelist magazine I still held in my hand, and they widened until they were practically popping out of her head. "No way!"

I didn't have any way to get around this one. I threw the magazine face-down on her desk. "He…he did say he was interested in investing in the DDC."

"The DDC? Isn't that just a little remote communicator thing for duel disks? That kind of thing doesn't have any value to him. Why does he care about that this much?" She pointed emphatically at the incredible account figure, and then seemed to come to a realization. She dropped her hand on the desk. "You have him on the hook."

"What? No!" I protested, "He just—"

"Yes, yes you do! You totally have him on the hook! God, when I said you should ask him to buy you expensive stuff I meant jewelry or something."

"I didn't ask him for anything," I pressed back, "He just said he'd like to invest and he'd make a call, we didn't talk about numbers."

Kari sighed and closed her eyes, as though picturing a beautiful scene. "Imagine how much more he might have donated if you really had, you know, gone up with him and let him—"

"Oh my god, shut up, Kari!"

She smirked. "Whatever, Ray. Did he tell you he wanted to invest before or after your make-out session?"

"We didn't make out," I insisted, and, thinking that the truth would prove Kari's point, lied: "It was before."

"So you kissed him as a thank-you?" she giggled, "If any of those other gross old business guys ever make contributions, will you kiss them too? It's only fair."

"Shut up, Kari," I said again. Every angle of this made me look bad, either like I entertained the affection of rich men to win investments for my personal enterprises, or like I had played hard-to-get with a celebrity and he was determined to get my attention any way he could. Well, maybe the latter was a little bit true, but I wasn't going to admit that to Kari.

"Does the Professor even know? He'll have to completely overhaul the labor in the department."

"My father just went in for a budget meeting," I said, and then— "Oh my god."

Right on cue, Kari's desk phone rang and she snatched it before I could. "Yes, this is Kari with the Research and Development Department." She raised her eyebrows at me as the caller spoke. "Yes, Mr. Director, she's back from lunch. I'll send her in right away." She hung up, and stared at me. "Board of Directors wants you in their budget meeting right now."

I stood outside the boardroom for an extra minute, going over my story in my head. I couldn't make it look like I had earned the company so much money through any unethical means or promises, or that Zarc's special interest in my project came from a secret he had told me in confidence, or after an intoxicated kiss. He had a special interest in the game, that was all. Wanted to build a new department to enhance the game's interactive features. That made sense, right? Certainly not to sway my affections toward him personally. Certainly not.

But my hands were starting to sweat as I stood in the hall, adrenaline building up in my ears. Zarc could get me fired. He and his stupid impulses to get my attention could get me fired and then he'd have ruined my life twice. All it would take was one comment from any of the Stardust Hotel staff, or Shino, or Kari or Dani, to give away that Zarc had some personal favors on strings attached to the huge amount of money he'd dropped into my lap. Perhaps the board of directors had already inquired to Shino and realized that Zarc had demanded my invitation to his party, maybe even considered me to be his date. I was definitely about to get fired.

It was best to get it over with.

I pushed open the door. All ten of them were there, the nine board members and my father. I was dressed in my usual work clothes, but felt woefully unprepared for all of them to be staring directly at me as I entered.

Father was looking curiously at me, but he didn't quite look angry. It was a good sign. There was no chair available for me, so I stood awkwardly behind my father with my heart pounding in my throat, waiting for them to start firing questions at me.

"Miss Akaba," the Chairman began, "This morning our company received a large sum of money from an anonymous investor to be directed at the Special Projects division of the Research and Development Department led by your father."

I didn't know if it was appropriate to admit that I knew this information already, so I just said, "Oh."

An anonymous investor. So, Zarc was covering his tracks. The investment could have come from any one of those business cards I'd received. I was safe.

"Have you recently spoken to any potential investors about your current Special Projects activities?"

The truth was safer than lying. "Yes," I said. "On Saturday night I attended the Sponsorship Gala hosted by the owners of the arena, as the plus-one of a friend." This wasn't entirely untrue, except the part where the "friend" was Zarc himself, whom I certainly didn't consider a friend. "A few of the investors found out where I worked, and a variety of them spoke to me about partnering with their companies on research projects. I showed a small group of them a non-classified project that the Professor and I have been working on out of the Special Projects budget, in addition to our usual activities."

"Which non-classified project is that?" the Chairman asked.

"We call it the Duel Disk Communicator." I pulled the little device out of my pocket and, leaning over my father's shoulder, placed it on the table as I had the other night in the Blackrose Lounge to show the Elites.

"What is the purpose of this device?"

"It's a compact communication device that remotely stores data from a paired duel disk," my father explained, glancing at me quizzically. "Something to carry instead of their larger disk, if they want to keep their information with them without the clunky disk itself."

"Moreover," I added, answering my father's unanswered question, "The Professor and I have been using this technology to test the capabilities of stabilizing Real SolidVision in a portable device, without full reliance on the main projection unit. I believe this is something that some of the investors I spoke to might have an interest in. Dividing the power output between the main machine would lower the power cost for the arena and make the game run more smoothly."

I waited, hoping that my explanation was making sense. The board of directors didn't have a strong grasp on the science of the Real SolidVision system, after all; they ran the company and we developed the machine. But the Chairman of the Board nodded behind his glasses, so at least he understood my story.

"We have received contributions from this same anonymous account in the past," The Chairman explained, "They are sporadic, but usually as generous as contributions from other parties. But this amount," he glanced down at his papers, probably listing the anonymous account's investment history, "Is far, far more than we've ever received from any investor. And this time it came with a phone call, insisting that this investment be directed toward your sub-department specifically. He seemed confident that you, Miss Akaba Ray, would know what to do with it."

"Who is this investor?" My father asked, "Which company?"

The Chairman raised his eyebrows. "If the account wishes to remain anonymous, it's not in our company's interest to compromise their generosity by inquiring into their identity. It does seem to be a male individual, though; this is the first time we've even received a phone call from him. Miss Akaba," he took off his glasses and peered sternly at me, "We have no desire to turn this contributor away or question his reasons for offering such a large gift, but in the interest of protecting the company from scandal, we need to know that this investment was not received through the exchange of," he cleared his throat uncomfortably, "non-business related favors on the night of that gala."

Yes, there it was. I was prepared to be hounded about this, the same thing Kari had immediately assumed: that I had seduced some corporate liaison or Elite duelist to get funding for my project. Even from behind him I could practically feel my father's concerned frown; the back of his neck tensed in that way it always did when he was stressed.

"I arrived at the party at seven o'clock," I stated firmly. "I spoke with a lot of interested parties, a representative from Sundustra, and then Aether Arena officials—Mr. Shino, around nine or ten o'clock. I left around eleven. The hotel concierge called a car for me; she will remember me by name."

"Professor Akaba, your daughter returned home around that time?"

"Yes," my father said, "I was in my home office but I heard her return a little past eleven."

"You can confirm that you did not enter any private accommodations inside the hotel?" the Chairman continued.

"I did not." Out of pure speculation, I added, "There are probably security cameras on every floor." It was best not to mention Kari as an alibi. I couldn't trust her not to spill about my little compromising moment with Zarc.

"If we see fit to investigate further, we will look into the proper channels," he concluded. "At this time I see no reason to inquire at the hotel, given the information you have provided for us."

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. No more unethical aspersions for now.

"Of course, an investment of this size will call for a thorough rearrangement of your department's priorities. Although I have half a mind to move you onto our Investor Relations team." The Chairman put his glasses back on and smiled.

I managed a smile back, and shook my head. "I'm fine as a technician, thank you."

"Professor and Miss Akaba, you are both dismissed. Please submit your plans for your department's reconstruction within a week."

Father followed me out of the boardroom, and I led the way silently down the hall. We turned a corner, and he caught my arm.

"Ray," he said, "This is a big change."

"I suppose so," I said, looking up at his face. His hairline had started to recede in this past year. "I think we'll need to hire a lot of engineers and set up a team to take over—"

"Not that," he said kindly. He took both of my hands in his. "You've changed. You were so angry at me for taking you out of the professional dueling sphere, I thought you'd never be happy as a technician. But now look at you, you went to that party just for fun and ended up making our department look appealing to investors. You're enjoying your job now, aren't you?"

I wanted to smile. I tried. But instead I put my face on his chest to hide the tears that were starting in my eyes.

"I wished you'd quit," I said quietly, "When the Real Fights started I really wanted you to quit instead of working on Real SolidVision. You used to be so happy when you were developing it, you'd come home and tell me all about it, but now…" I put my arms around him, "I've seen how sad you are. We're just helping those awful duelists hurt each other and ruin everything. I love dueling, I love being around the monsters, but I just…"

He placed a hand on my head, like he always did when I had been upset as a child. "It's true that my work on Real SolidVision allowed this chaos to escalate," he said, "But I believe that young people like you will reshape the future of dueling. You are smart and strong and I'm proud of you."

I smiled up at him through my watering eyes. "I'm being unprofessional," I said, "You're my boss."

He put his arm around my shoulders as we continued walking back to the lab. "I'm happy here as long as you're with me," he said. "I'm selfish. I pulled you out of the professional league because I was afraid of losing you."

"I know," I said. "I love you, Father."

When we reached the lab, my father crossed to his desk to power up the projection machine, and I returned to my desk, thinking I might write up the report from my Field test runs earlier today.

A gentle chime issued from my purse. Another message, from that same unknown disk code as the one I'd received at the party:

 _I trust my contribution made it to your department correctly. I was very specific._

I stared down at the message. This left me with no doubts about who our "anonymous investor" was. It really was him. Not wanting to seem too readily available, I waited twenty minutes to reply;

 _Yes. The Board of Directors has instructed us to rearrange the labor in the department to focus on the Special Projects, so our work on the DDC will begin as soon as possible. Thank you for your generosity._

Trying to stay professional, yes, that was best. Not to come off too familiar, or too friendly. But, less than a minute later, another chime—

 _Can I see you again?_

I waited even longer to reply to this one, hardly paying attention to what I was writing in my report as I quietly panicked. He wanted to see me again? Maybe I really did have him on the hook, just like Kari said. I couldn't ignore him after he'd been so generous to my department, but spending time alone with him seemed like a terrible idea. Finally, after an hour of fretting and rewriting my distracted report, I messaged back:

 _I suspect it will take a few weeks before we've made any progress worth showing._

Stay professional. Don't get personal. Don't get personal.

 _That's not what I meant._

Oh, of course it wasn't. Of course he was asking me out. He had made such an effort to avoid being seen with me at the party the other night but here he was, trying to get me to go out for coffee or something with him—as if it wasn't even a ridiculous thing to ask. So ridiculous! As if someone like him could just go to a coffee shop or a restaurant and not cause a scene. As if someone like him had any business being with someone like me.

But I couldn't ignore him anymore. After reading and rereading my response to make perfectly certain it was neither openly rude nor too provocative, I sent him:

 _The Board of Directors seemed concerned about my ethical behavior with regards to your investment. Please understand._

It wasn't a lie. And, thankfully, a few moments later:

 _I understand._


	5. Odd-Eyes

_Chapter 5: Odd-Eyes_

Over the next several weeks, my father and I took on the task of dividing the department into two. We hired engineers; some for each department, and appointed project managers to the positions that he and I had originally filled. There was an unused laboratory room on one of the higher floors that we took over for the DDC project; smaller, but since we didn't need a Field simulator in both areas, we built a projection plane to test the monsters' energy readings. It was table-height and served as something like a stage for each monster we tested with the new system.

We built about twelve different prototypes, working our way from miniatures to full-size versions of low-level monsters, and then to more powerful ones. The energy output fizzled on our earlier models; we sought a more efficient power source. The intermediate models yielded proper power output but physically unstable monsters; during our scheduled Field Lab sessions, they would disappear after making an attack even though they ought to remain on the field. The later models, which we were currently in the process of testing, were very promising. Strong, robust monsters and even energy usage, although still limited in projection time. They would yield a monster for about three minutes. But, the closer we got, the happier the monsters seemed. They could not step off the projection plane or else they'd lose the power contributed by the RSV system, but they glowed with joy, singing into my heart at being even closer to our world than ever before. I began adding notes into my reports on how each monster felt while it was being projected, and focused my efforts on the models that made the monsters happier. Each test was more and more successful. It was as though they were guiding me, their emotions leading me toward a perfect model.

Kari got a bigger administrator's desk on this floor, and I entered one morning to find Danny leaning against her cubicle wall, chatting happily. Kari had a nice vase of fresh flowers on her desk, which I assumed he'd brought. She had confided in me, without my asking, that she and Danny had been through some rough patches in their relationship, but were working through them. He brought her coffee every morning to spend extra time with her before he headed to his office.

"Any weekend plans, you two?" I greeted them cheerfully.

"Kari wants to go to the mall to try on new bathing suits," Danny said, winking. "So, Ray, seen your boyfriend lately?"

I scoffed and rolled my eyes at the intrusive question. "You mean the _random guy_ that I kissed once at a party while I was drunk three months ago and haven't seen since?"

"You keep saying that," Kari said, somewhat bitterly, "But some 'random guy' sent you these anyway." She offered me the vase of flowers. Roses, pink and deep red.

"Oh my god," I groaned, taking the vase out of her hands. They really did smell lovely.

"There's no card, except the tag with your name," Kari said, "And—full disclosure—if there was, I would have read it."

"Thank you, Kari."

"So?"

I looked over the bouquet at Kari's expectant face. "So what?"

"Care to admit anything now?" Kari raised an eyebrow. Danny stood up straight to listen in.

"I don't have anything new to admit," I said, brushing past them to shoulder my way into the lab, and then called back over my shoulder, "There never was anything to begin with!"

Behind me I heard Kari say to Danny, "How come you don't bring me flowers?"

There was no space on my desk for the vase, so I placed it on a filing cabinet.

"Who are those from?" My father was across the lab room, starting up the RSV unit to begin the day's first tests.

"There's no card," I replied, "Kari just said they were for me."

"They're the colors of your hair."

I smiled. "I guess so." I pulled out my file drawer of monster cards with their attached report papers. "What are we working on today?"

"We're beginning level six."

I thumbed through the file and drew out a ream of blank report templates, and took them back to my father's desk, where several monitors glowed with various graphs and charts, ready to begin tests.

This particular prototype system was not meant to sustain the monsters for very long; it was purely meant to hold them on the field long enough for us to register the power stability and chart any irregularities we might find. After every set of levels, we would adjust the system for the next set. By now we had graphed the power output as a parabolic curve; the difference in energy consumption between a level five and a level six monster was much greater than the difference between levels one and two. By this point we had tracked the formula well enough to adjust the power output more or less accurately, but we had to run tests on a wide selection of monsters just to be sure. There were about two hundred in this stack of cards. It was tedious, but once we got out of the test phase we could take the system downstairs to the main RSV projection system and test the effects of Spell and Trap cards.

We worked our way through the stacks of level six monster cards. Each monster would appear on the projection plane, and we would clock the time it would last before it became unstable. My father read out numbers, and I wrote them down, each time making an additional note for myself about the emotions I would perceive from them.

Each monster was different. Some were wildly emotive, others were practically unresponsive. Joy, frustration, confusion, contentment. Some more complex emotions I had a hard time describing in only a few words before the monsters vanished. I began to notice that the monsters that I was able to understand the most clearly were ones that I knew; ones that I had played routinely in the past. It felt like they were reaching out to me, willing me to feel their souls, wanting to be closer to me.

We worked all the way up to lunch, both of us so immersed in the routine that we completely forgot about our mid-morning break. Each monster took three to five minutes until they became unstable with the prototype system, so we had gotten through a little more than sixty monsters by the time we realized we out to pause.

I took my salad into the breakroom again, thankful for a chance to rest my eyes from the template pages. A soft chime issued from my purse.

 _I'd like to come by and see your progress._

It wasn't an inappropriate request, I reasoned; as our main financial benefactor, Zarc ought to be able to see the results of his investment. I typed back:

 _I'm pleased with our current status. I'd be happy to show you._

And then, as an afterthought—

 _Thank you for the flowers._

He took only a moment to type back:

 _I'll come by your office at 7:00._

Seven o'clock. After everyone else would have been gone for two hours. Well, I thought again, it wasn't unreasonable. Zarc needed to maintain his anonymity as our financier, and it would seem far too bold for him to arrive while the rest of the office workers were there. Better to avoid Kari and Danny and their prying eyes.

By the end of the day, Father and I had gotten through a little over half of the monsters in our test stack. We'd have to finish up on Monday, but then we'd be able to move on to even higher levels. Father packed up his briefcase, but I stayed at my desk.

"Are you coming home, darling?"

"I'd like to check a few more monsters," I said, "Just double-checking those slightly irregular ones. I…I might meet Kari for coffee after her date."

He wrapped me with a quick one-armed hug, and left. I spent some time alphabetizing the cards we had gone through today, and stacked the reference sheets in the outbox for our admin team to enter the data into the records system. Out of my own desk I pulled a couple level six cards; now that we had raised our energy rate to stabilize them, I'd been looking forward to seeing them projected here.

I laid a card face-up on the DDC module's card plane. The separate RSV system lit and exerted a gentle hum, and within a moment she had materialized before me. My monster, one I had been playing for years. I could hear her voice the most clearly out of any of them; she had been with me for so long, and had always helped me through tight pinches back when I was still dueling in the professional league. Since I was always using test decks as a technician, I didn't get to see her like this very often anymore.

She smiled when she saw me, and I felt her joy warm my heart. I stepped up onto the projection plane beside her. She reached out her hand to me, and I took it. It was warm, and perfectly solid, like she really was alive. I had long since gotten used to the technology that projected solid mass from digital data, but it still felt like magic.

Even as I stood holding her hand, I felt a new emotion begin to mingle with her happiness. Was it confusion?

"What's wrong?" I whispered, as though she might tell me a secret.

She smiled, and raised her other hand, placing her glowing finger gently on my nose, to indicate that I was the owner of this particular feeling.

"I'm not confused," I said.

She tapped my nose, insisting. I thought about the bouquet of roses on my filing cabinet, and the short history of messages on my DDC. The lamps in the trellised pathways at the Stardust Hotel. She nodded, confirming these thoughts. There was really no use arguing with her like I did with Kari and Danny; I was confused. Scared, yes, that too. Hesitant. Nervous…but curious, and…excited? She reflected all of these feelings back to me, offering them out to me to inspect and confirm.

"Why can't I really understand you?" I asked quietly. "He can—he can really hear them like they're speaking to him. Why isn't it like that with me?"

She smiled again, but this time she was sad. She laid her hand on my head, like my father had done when I had cried outside the board room. She let go of my hand, and placed two fingers on my heart, then on her own heart. She shook her head, and I could feel her sadness grow.

"We're not connected enough?" I said. "But…"

She shook her head again. Had I misunderstood? She raised her hand so that her palm was facing me, as though to indicate a barrier between us. She shook her head, and then suddenly flickered out of sight.

Well, I had ignored the energy output on the graphs, but she had been about as stable as the rest of today's level six monster tests. I stepped off the projection plane in some mixture of confusion and relief. She had held up her hand as a barrier, as though to say, _Don't come closer._ But why? I could project her again, start over, but what good would it do? Even having my own feelings reflected back to me made me anxious. It wasn't fair.

I could leave. I could walk out of the office and go home, and not wait for Zarc. I could simply avoid those feelings. But that would be unfair of me, downright rude, to someone who had been so generous to my career. So I stayed, and I waited.

"Am I late?"

I jumped. I'd let myself slip into a deep, internal reverie and had forgotten to watch the time. Zarc was standing in the lab doorway, casual but well-dressed in another dark-colored button-down shirt. I didn't know why, but for some reason I had expected him to be in his battle-worn dueling gear, like he wore on his cover photo for the _Duelist_ interview.

"Uh—no, you're right on time," I said, knocking my a stack of templates off of my desk as I stood up too quickly. "Ah—come in," I stooped to collect the fallen papers.

He moved to stand about halfway between me and the door, as I quickly scooped up the templates and slapped the disorganized stack back on my desk.

"I kept the RSV unit running," I said, slightly breathless, "To show you what we're working on."

"How does it work?"

"We're still testing monsters currently," I explained. Carefully avoiding eye contact with him, I pointed at the humming RSV machine. "This is a low-power build we've been using in this laboratory, just to test the properties of the technology. The larger RSV unit, like the one the arena has, is still downstairs in the Field Lab. Once we've determined the power level we need, we can apply it to the downstairs unit and start testing Traps and Spells on a projected Field, and running test duels to make sure it works."

"What about the duel disk part?" he asked.

"Well," I crossed to the other side of the projection plane, to a podium that contained a small device hooked into the computers on my father's desk, "We're still calling this the DDC, but it's really a portable Real SolidVision projection module. The current duel disks send the signal of the cards being played to the RSV system in the arena, and the RSV unit projects them in solid form. This DDC module can now handle a portion of the projection, and the RSV unit handles the rest."

"Like half and half?" Zarc picked up the DDC gently and examined it closely.

"About twenty-five percent," I said, "Ideally, I'd like the disks and the RSV unit to share the monster projection at fifty-fifty portions. It would reserve more energy for the RSV unit to focus on the Field and the Spell and Traps. We're working our way there slowly; our last DDC build could handle seventeen percent. We're being careful not to be too ambitious too quickly and fry out the systems."

Zarc put the DDC back down on the table, and I switched it on. The card plane sprang back into life.

"So it's more like a duel disk now," he said.

"More or less," I replied, "Again, we built this one just to test the projection of monsters. The final product will fully run the game, and could eventually replace the current duel disks in future models."

"And the monsters get projected here?" Zarc indicated the projection plane. It took up most of the room, given the size of the monsters that would have to appear there. "Sort of like an isolated piece of a Field?"

"Right," I said, "We've worked our way up to level six Normal and Effect Monsters, I could show you…" I reached toward the stack of monsters we still had left to test, but he caught my arm.

"This one," he said, holding out one card.

"Level seven?" I took the card, taking it carefully. It was old; a little worn around the edges, but I had seen this monster many times since Zarc had become the Champion. "I don't know if the system can support—"

"Please."

I looked up at him. He was earnest, insistent. He was still holding onto my arm.

"Alright," I said, "I'll—I can estimate a new power adjustment. It'll only take a moment." I let Zarc's hand slide off my arm and moved around to my father's desk and, according to the formula our parabolic graph was conveying, slid the energy output meter to about where it ought to be to support a level seven monster. The hum of the RSV unit across the room raised its pitch as the machine adjusted its frequency. I moved back around to the table in front of the projection plane, and gently laid Zarc's monster card on the DDC.

It materialized on the platform, the great scarlet beast, the Odd-Eyes Dragon. Immediately its emotions struck me in great and acute measure like I had never felt before; thunderous and complex. It was disoriented, and then curious, as though waking up from sleep and finding itself in a new place. Its long tail swished along the surface of the platform, and it stamped around, shuffling this way and that, swinging its head on its long neck to peer around the room. I felt its longing, searching, and then…

It turned its head toward us, and its eyes fell upon Zarc, and I felt its incredible, undeniable joy. It stamped its feet, as though desperate to run off the projection plane at him. Zarc, too, was grinning; his face was glowing like I'd never seen, a wild and uncontainable happiness. He grabbed my wrist and charged forward, reaching his other hand out to greet his great beast. He clambered up onto the platform, dragging me along with him, and laid his hand on the dragon's beaklike golden snout.

A new emotion, even stronger still, welled up in me from this creature. The dragon pushed right past his hand and pressed his face right into Zarc's chest. Zarc let go of my hand and wrapped both his arms around the dragon's jaws, bowing his own head into the monster's brow. This feeling was overwhelming me, filling my heart and invading my mind, overpowering even my own thoughts.

Love.

It was overflowing with incredible, terrifying love. I felt like it would crush me, destroy me. I was drowning in it. I was dizzy. It was all I could do just to stay standing and breathe as Zarc embraced his great dragon like a brother. Presently he straightened up, and held the dragon's jaws between his hands. The weight of the monster's love subsided somewhat, but I could still feel it bearing upon me like a heavy blanket.

"He's been with me since the beginning," he explained, still gazing, enraptured, at the monster, "As far back as I can remember."

The monster turned its head to me as Zarc addressed me, only just realizing I was there. Curiosity now entered into its mind, and it snapped its jaws playfully and shuffled its feet, wriggling in excitement.

"He's rather rambunctious," Zarc said with a laugh, "He loves attention, but he's lacking a bit in confidence. He needs lots of encouragement."

The creature swished its tail again, and bobbed its head at me. I stepped forward in trepidation. I'd seen this monster in the arena, uninhibited in doing its master's cruel bidding, but for all I could feel from this monster's heart, there was no wrath in it at all. No evil, savage nature like it always seemed in its duels; just innocent, childlike happiness. I hesitated, wondering whether I could trust my own sense of this monster's emotions.

"Go on," Zarc said. He was still smiling.

I raised my hand and stroked the bridge of the monster's snout. It blinked at me; it had one red eye and one green, but both gazed at me closely. The weight of its heart was nothing like I'd ever felt before; other monsters felt like a twinge, a little pressure, but this creature's soul was massive and intemperate, almost more than I could bear. From deep within the dragon's throat issued a soft, low crooning.

"He likes you," Zarc laughed.

"I can tell," I replied breathlessly. It was nowhere near the insurmountable love the monster had for Zarc, but I could feel its friendly appreciation toward me as I smiled back at it. It turned its head back to Zarc and nudged him playfully. Zarc chuckled and patted the monster's jaw, and then without warning—the great dragon flickered out of sight.

It was like coming up for air. The weight of the dragon's emotions lifted off of me and I drew a breath, and realized I was shaking. Zarc dropped his hand to his side and glanced up at the projector above.

"I'm sorry," I gasped, "Right now the system only sustains the monsters for a few minutes before it needs to recharge."

"It's fine," Zarc said, but he looked a little lost. He shoved his hands into his pockets, as he had done when we had talked under the trellises at the Stardust Hotel, and seemed unsure as to how to continue the conversation now that the subject had vanished.

I stepped down from the platform and retrieved his card from the DDC. I wasn't sure what to say, how to put the feeling of the crushing weight of his dragon's presence into words. Did he feel it, too? Was he just used to it?

"You've made excellent progress," he said, turning around, suddenly businesslike. "I'm—I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the…" He looked down at my hand offering his card. He took my hand, put the card back in his jacket pocket, and held my hand between both of his own. "Have dinner with me."

"What?" I blustered, completely blindsided by the request. "I just—"

I looked into his face as he waited, holding my hand, for my answer. His expression was much the same as when he had offered me his dragon card, asking me to project it for him. Earnest.

I could say yes. I had lied and told Father I was meeting Kari for coffee; I could be gone for another couple of hours without him worrying about where I was. I could spend an evening with a very rich man that so many other women were dying to get even a glance from. He could take me somewhere extremely nice, exclusive and private, and ridiculously expensive. It'd be nothing for a man like him, the most famous duelist in the entire League…

"It's just not a good idea," I said quietly, letting my hand slip out of his.

I wanted to apologize. I felt so very unkind. He looked crestfallen, and I imagined not very many women had rejected his invitations before. But he gathered himself quickly, put his hands back into his pockets once again, and said, "Right, it's not appropriate, because of…business ethics." Was there a little bitterness in his voice?

"Please understand," I said imploringly, "I'm not—I just think it would come across as a conflict of interest."

His hands were still in his pockets but his eyes were fixed on my face. "There's no conflict in my interests."

I felt the traitorous flush rise in my cheeks as I looked away from him, muttering, "I'm sorry."

"It's a pleasure working with you." He turned on his heel and walked stiffly toward the lab exit. He had almost reached the door when, perhaps against my better judgement, I called out—

"Yuusha."

He spun around, and met me with a surprised, hopeful gaze.

I took a breath. "After we finish testing Effect Monsters, we'll be moving on to Fusion," I said slowly. "Please come back and see our progress in the future."

His face split into a glowing grin again, and without another word he shouldered his way out of the lab door, leaving me alone in the lab, as the projection system hummed quietly behind me.

I stood alone for another several minutes, trying to process this strange interaction. It was like I was drunk again, only able to recall fleeting, disconnected moments. His presence again, oddly calm and unguarded. His dragon, the fearsome beast of the arena, was nothing like I'd ever felt from any monster in the lab before. Even my own monsters had never felt so real, so close, so inexplicably alive.

Suddenly struck with a thrill of panic, I rushed to my father's computer screens. The energy output readings were listed on the monitor, accompanied by a full-body model of the Odd-Eyes Dragon. I took a moment to register that the energy output from Zarc's dragon had read at just about the same as any other monster we had tested together, slightly elevated due to its higher level. So there really was no detectable difference, no measurable reason that this monster had felt so tumultuously filled with life…it was just another creature like they all were, another synthetically projected model, at least in body. Quietly, as the hum of the RSV unit lowered its pitch into inactive silence, I deleted the monster's data from all of our test records.

So my father would never know.

I would see Zarc's face on the magazines in the convenience stores, plastered with brightly-colored captions like _WHAT'S HIS SECRET?_ and offering deck-building tips that might emulate his style and flair. I ignored them. I averted my eyes from the TV screens that recapped his latest arena appearances, and diverted Kari's pointed comments about my "prospects."

It was harder still to avoid listening to Kari and Danny on certain Monday mornings, excitedly rehashing the play-by-play of Zarc's latest victories. Any tournament winner could chose to take his victory and walk away with considerable prize money, or to challenge the Elite that sponsored the event. Flintlock was the newest to the shortlisted group of Elites after having unseated the previous one about half a year ago. It was always all over the news when an Elite fell; constantly recapped and described in graphic, horrifying detail in every magazine and newspaper, chatted about with rapture in every grocery line. One weekend Danny had finally managed to get tickets to one of Zarc's championship matches, and he and Kari couldn't help but recount over and over how that same great scarlet dragon—the friendly one, the one with the mismatched eyes that had playfully let me stroke its nose—had slammed that tournament winner right into the ground, shattering that shining moment of victory into wretched, horrific defeat.

But now I knew that monster wasn't vicious. It had long been said that a duelist's favorite monsters were the manifestation of his soul; and yet after meeting his most beloved dragon, an innocent, gentle and kind creature, I felt even more conflicted over Zarc than I had before. It was like the Zarc of the arena, on the screens and in the magazines, was a completely different person than the one who had visited me in the darkened lab after hours, talking lovingly about his dragon over the low hum of the RSV system. A quietly passionate man, as disparate in spirit as the color of his monster's eyes. Yuusha.


End file.
